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THE 
UTTERMOST STAR 

AND OTHER 

GLEAMS OF FANCY 



BY 

F. W. BOREHAM 

author op 

"the silver shadow," "the other side op the hill,' 

"faces in the fire," "mushrooms on the moor," 

"the golden milestone," "mountains in 

the mist," "the luggage op 

life," etc. 




THE ABINGDON PRESS 
NEW YORK CINCINNATI 



\ 



Copyright, 19 19, by 
F. W. BOREHAM 



SEP -4 I9iy 



©CI.A529773 



CONTENTS 



PART I 



CHAP. 

I. THE SIGNAL-BOX . 
II. THE UTTERMOST STAR . 

III. PICKING UP THE PILE LIGHT 

IV. MARJORIE 
V. CAMOUFLAGE 

VI. THE WHALER 
VII. A BOX OF PERFUME 
VIII. SLIPPERS 
IX. THE MISER OF MURDSTONE CREEK 
X. THE SECRET . 
XI. MARY GOLDING 



PAGE 

9 

19 

27 

38 
48 

58 

68 

78 

89 
100 

no 



PART II 

I. DRIFTING APART . 
II. THE WILL-o'-THE-WISP 

III. THE doctor's CONVERSION 

IV. HEATHER AND BLUEBELLS 
V. THE VILLAGE GREEN 

VI. THE SIEVE . 



. 123 

. 144 
. 156 
, 167 
. 180 



4 



Contents 



PART III 



CHAP. 

I. slip! .... 

II. THE FOUR IDOLS . 

III. HIS WORSHIP THE MAYOR 

IV. THE LANTERN IN THE LANE 
V. THE HOLLY-TREE . 

VI. RIFTS OF BLUE 
VII. A DIVIDED DIACONATE . 
VIII. WHEN THE TIDE TURNS 



PAGE 
. 191 
. 201 
. 213 
. 221 
. 230 
• 239 
. 247 
. 257 



BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION 

An author putting the finishing touches to his manu- 
script and writing his Introduction resembles a host- 
ess preparing to receive her guests. For weeks she 
has been engaged in making the most careful prep- 
arations for their entertainment. Now the evening 
has arrived; her great hour has come; she is about 
to take up her position at the door. Her anxious 
eye wanders restlessly over the polished floors, the 
pictured walls, the cosy chairs, the faultless tables — 
everything. She sees that every flower is showing 
to the best advantage; that every noble vase and 
marble statuette is in its place; and that every lamp 
is casting its softest, loveliest glow. 

But what is that? The sound of wheels! They 
draw up at the gate ! Throw the doors wide open ! 
The first guests are arriving ! 

Welcome! a thousand welcomes! If those who 
accept the hospitality of these pages find in them 
half the pleasure that their preparation has afforded 
me, I shall count myself the happiest of hosts. 

FRANK W. BOREHAM. 

Armadale, Melbourne, Australia, 
Easter, 1919. 



PART I 



THE SIGNAL-BOX 

When I was a small boy in my Kentish home, I was 
occasionally missing — even at meal-times. As the 
years wore on, the alarm created by these mysteri- 
ous disappearances of mine gradually subsided, not 
by reason of any dwindling value or importance at- 
tached to my person, but simply because a very 
shrewd conjecture could be formed as to my where- 
abouts. For at the foot of our garden, separated 
from it by a high bank, which was itself a romantic 
wilderness of blackberries, ran the railway. And 
just beside the railway line, not more than a hundred 
yards from the bottom of the garden, was the signal- 
box. Few things delighted me more than to spend 
an hour in that old signal-box. It was close to the 
mouth of the tunnel. I loved to hear the bell go 
ring-a-ting-ting when the train entered the tunnel on 
the far side, and to watch for its emergence on our 
side. It seemed to me positively uncanny that the 
signalman could tell by all these clanging tokens 
just where all the trains were. I liked to see him 
swing the great levers backwards and forwards, 
pulling the signals up and down, and at night-time 

9 



lo The Uttermost Star 

causing the green and red lights to shine from the 
tall signal-posts. As I sat beside his great roaring 
fire on winter evenings, and saw him stop the trains 
or let them pass, just as he pleased, I thought he 
must surely be one of the most important men in 
the country. I could scarcely imagine that the 
Prime Minister had greater authority or responsi- 
bility. And I remember, as clearly as though it 
were yesterday, that I used to sit on the stool be- 
side that fire — face in hands and elbows on knees — 
wondering if I might hope, one great day, to attain 
to the glory of being a signalman. And, surely 
enough, I have ! 

For I have come to see, as the days have gone by, 
that we humans are expert and inveterate signalmen. 
We have a perfect genius for concocting mysterious 
codes; we revel in flashing out cryptic heliograms; 
we glory in receiving occult messages. We even 
communicate in this abstruse and recondite fashion 
with our own selves. A man will twist a piece of 
string round his finger, or tie a knot in the corner of 
his pocket-handkerchief, or stick a scrap of stamp- 
paper on the face of his watch, to remind him of 
something that has nothing whatever to do with 
string or handkerchief or stamp-paper. It is his 
secret code, and in the terms of that code this invet- 
erate signalman is signalling to himself, that is all ! 

Moreover, we not only signal to ourselves, but we 
are fascinated by the spectacle of other people sig- 
nalling to themselves. A novel becomes invested 



The Signal-Boz n 

with a new interest when its plot suddenly turns 
upon the weird phenomena of a witch's cavern or 
the mysterious ritual of a gipsy camp. By means of 
her viper, her owl, her toad, her cauldron, her tripod, 
her herbs, and all the rest of it, the withered crone 
in the dimly lighted cave is signalling to herself 
from morning to night; by means of the crossed 
sticks where the roads fork the gipsies leave tokens 
for themselves and each other. Many a man will 
wear a charm hanging round his neck, or suspended 
to his watch-chain, of which nobody knows the 
significance but himself. Luther went down to his 
grave without revealing even to his wife the mean- 
ing of the five mystic initials that he had carved over 
the portal of his house. They are, he explained, the 
initials of five German words; but what those words 
were he alone knew. The signals stand to this day 
over the portal ; the code was locked up in the great 
reformer's breast, and, deposited there, it descended 
with him to his tomb. 

Henrik Ibsen, too, the great Norwegian drama- 
tist, kept on his writing-table a small ivory tray con- 
taining a number of grotesque figures, a wooden 
bear, a tiny devil, two or three cats — one of them 
playing a fiddle — and some rabbits. T never write 
a single line of any of my dramas,' Ibsen used to say, 
'without having that tray and its occupants before 
me on my table. I could not write without them. But 
why I use them and how, this is my own secret.' 
Here was a great and brilliant thinker happy in 



12 The Uttermost Star 

being able to flash covert messages to himself by a 
code which no one but himself ever knew ! I in- 
stance these — the witch's cavern, the gipsy's ritual, 
the reformer's portal, and the dramatist's tray — to 
show that our passion for signalling is so ingrained 
and deep-seated that, if we cannot satisfy it in cryp- 
tic communication with others, we atone for the de- 
ficiency by signalling to ourselves. 

After all, there is but one really universal lan- 
guage. It was spoken in the world's first morning, 
and men will still be speaking it when they are 
startled by the shocks of doom. It was the language 
of the Stone Age, and it will be the language of the 
Golden Age. It is spoken all the world over by men 
of all kinds, classes, colours, and conditions; and if 
either Mars or the moon is really inhabited, it is 
spoken there too. The little child speaks it before he 
is able to lisp one single word of our clumsier dic- 
tionary speech ; and the aged speak it long after the 
palsied lip has lost its utterance. It is equally intel- 
ligible to the English merchant on the London 
market, to the Indian trapper in the Western for- 
ests, to the Chinese mandarin in the far interior of 
Asia, to the South Sea Islander basking in the rays 
of an equatorial sun, and to the Eskimo in his frozen 
hut amidst the blinding whiteness of the icy North. 
It is known even to the beasts of the field and the 
birds of the air; they understand it, and sometimes 
even speak it. The universal language is the lan- 
guage of gesture. The shrug of the shoulders; the 



The Signal-Boz 13 

flash of the eye; the knitting of the brows; the curl- 
ing of the Hp; the stamping of the foot; the clench- 
ing of the fist; the nodding of the head; the pointing 
of the hand, — here is a language which is known to 
every one. It has no alphabet, no grammar, and no 
syntax ; but the simplest can understand it. Indeed, 
the simplest understand it best. The savage is a 
master of gesture. He speaks with every nerve and 
muscle. And the little child is no less eloquent. 
Playing with her doll on the floor behind my chair 
is a small scrap of humanity who has as yet uttered 
no word that a lexicographer would recognize. And 
yet it would be absurd to say that she has not spoken. 
Her pushings and pullings, her beckonings and 
pointings, her smilings and poutings, are as expres- 
sive as anything in any of your vocabularies. She 
has found a speech for which the builders of Babel 
sighed in vain — a speech that can be understood by 
men and women of every nation under heaven. It 
is the language of signals. 

We are living in a universe that is constantly try- 
ing to talk. It does not understand any of your 
artificial or manufactured languages — your Hebrew 
or Greek or Latin; your English or German or 
French — but it understands the universal language, 
the language of gestures, the language of signals. 
*The air,' says Emerson, *is full of sounds, the sky 
of tokens; the ground is all memoranda and sig- 
natures ; and every object is covered over with hints 
which speak to the intelligent.' The stars above my 



14 The Uttermost Star 

head are signalling ; the astronomer masters the code 
and reads the secrets of the universe. The stones 
that I tread beneath my feet are signalling ; the geol- 
ogist unravels the code and interprets the romance 
of ages. 

All Nature is one intricate system of signals, as 
any naturalist will tell you. Let Richard Jefferies 
speak for them all. In discussing the birds that 
shelter in the ivy under his gable, he says that often 
a robin or a wren will pounce upon a caterpillar 
whilst the grub is still concealed among the grass. 
How is it done? It is all a matter of signals. *The 
bird's eyes, ever on the watch for food, learn to de- 
tect the slightest indication of its presence. Slugs, 
caterpillars, and such creatures, in moving among 
the grass, cause a slight agitation of the grassblades; 
they lift up a leaf by crawling under it, or depress it 
with their weight by getting on it. This enables the 
bird to detect their presence, even when quite 
hidden by the herbage, experience having taught it 
that, when grass is moved by the wind, broad patches 
sway simultaneously, whilst, when an insect or cater- 
pillar is the agent, only a single leaf or blade is 
stirred.' The birds learn the code and readily in- 
terpret the signals. Those who live near to Nature 
soon acquire the same habit. The poetry of the 
countryside abounds with rhymes and couplets that 
are, after all, only expositions of Nature's signals. 

When elm leaves are as big as a shilling, 

You may sow French beans if you be willing. 



The Signal-Boz 15 

What is this but the interpretation of the code? 
The whispering elm leaves are the farmer's signal- 
flags. The universe, like the baby on my study floor, 
is always pathetically trying to talk to me; and the 
pity of it is that I am so slow to understand. 

The language of signals is, I have shown, the one 
universal language. That is why, when man has 
something really great to say, he says it, not audibly, 
but visibly. The lover abandons the dictionary; he 
can say what he wishes to say so much more expres- 
sively by means of signals, A look; a pressure of 
the hand; a ring; a kiss, — what vocabulary could 
compare with a code like this? And it is a code 
that is comprehended in every nation under heaven. 
Or what man could express in so many words all 
that he feels, when, for example, he waves his coun- 
try's flag? *Have not I,' Carlyle makes Herr Teu- 
felsdrockh inquire, *have not I myself known five 
hundred living soldiers sabred into crow's meat for a 
piece of glazed cotton which they call their Flag; 
which, had you sold it at any market-cross, would 
not have brought above three groschen ? Did not the 
whole Hungarian nation rise, like some tumultuous 
moon-stirred Atlantic, when Kaiser Joseph pocketed 
their Iron Crown, an implement, as was sagaciously 
observed, in size and commercial value little differ- 
ing from a horseshoe ? It is in and through symbols 
that man, consciously or unconsciously, lives, works, 
and has his being; those ages, moreover, are ac- 
counted the noblest which can the best recognize 



i6 The Uttermost Star 

symbolic worth and prize it the highest. For is 
not a symbol ever, to him who has eyes for it, some 
dimmer or clearer revelation of the Godlike?* 
When, that is to say, man has something really great 
to say he says it by some mute sign or silent symbol. 
Similarly, when God has something to say to the 
Jew alone. He may perhaps cause His messenger to 
say it in the Hebrew tongue ; but when He has some- 
thing to say to all men everywhere, He always 
speaks the universal language, the language of ges- 
ture and symbol and sign. He speaks to the uni- 
versal heart by means of the Ark, the Scapegoat, 
the Passover, the Mercy Seat, the Serpent in the 
Wilderness, the Cities of Refuge. Such signs need 
no translation; they speak to men of every clime 
and time. In the New Testament the same principle 
holds true. 

He talked of lilies, vines, and corn, 

The sparrow and the raven, 
And tales so natural, yet so wise, 

Were on men's hearts engraven. 
And yeast and bread and flax and cloth, 

And eggs and fish and candles ; 
See, how the whole familiar world 

He most divinely handles. 

When God has something really vital to say to 
man. He says it in a language that requires no trans- 
lation or interpretation. He says it in a way that 
all men can comprehend. *The veil of the temple 
was rent in twain from the top to the bottom.' All 



The Signal-Box 17 

men everywhere can see the awful and profound 
significance of such a signal. A man may be unable 
to grasp the doctrine of the Atonement; but where 
is the heart that does not respond to the Vision of 
the Cross ? 

We are inveterate signalmen. We begin to make 
signals as soon as we crawl from our cradles ; we are 
still making them when tottering down to our 
graves. 

*It may be, master/ said Richard Bannatyne, 
John Knox's faithful serving-man, *it may be that 
you will still be able to recognize my voice after 
you have become oblivious to every other sight and 
sound. When you are apparently unconscious, I 
shall bend over you and ask if you have still the hope 
of glory. Will you promise, if you are able to give 
me some signal, that you will do so ?' 

The old reformer made the promise, and, a few 
days later, turned into his room to die. 

Grim in his deep death-anguish the stern old champion lay, 
And the locks upon his pillow were floating thin and grey, 
And, visionless and voiceless, with quick and labouring breath, 
He waited for his exit through life's dark portal, death. 

'Hast thou the hope of glory ?' They bowed to catch the thrill 
That through some languid token might be responsive still, 
Nor watched they long nor waited for some obscure reply. 
He raised a clay-cold finger and pointed to the sky. 

So the death-angel found him, what time his brow he bent, 
To give the struggling spirit a sweet enfranchisement. 



1 8 The Uttermost Star 

So the death-angel left him, what time earth's bonds were 

riven, 
The cold, stark, stiffening finger still pointing up to heaven. 

It is a great thing when the signalman's last signals 
are as unequivocal as that. 



II 

THE UTTERMOST STAR 



I HAVE been on a visit to the uttermost star. You 
will search all your learned astronomical volumes 
in vain for any reference to such a sphere. No 
observatory has descried it; it never swam into the 
field of even the most powerful telescope. The fact 
is that I discovered it myself. I was longing one 
day for a bird's-eye view of the universe. You do 
not get a satisfactory conception of the architecture 
of a cathedral by attending evening worship. You 
must see the glorious structure in the daytime and 
from a distance. Similarly, you do not know the 
universe till you have seen it from afar. You 
cannot see things in their right perspective. A 
sparrow on a housetop looks as big as a star in the 
sky. Tf,' I said to myself that morning, *if only I 
could get right away from all the worlds, and if only 
I could view the universe from some point out be- 
yond the universe, I should be able to compile a 
new standard of values. The little things that seem 
large because they are so near at hand will all 

19 



20 The Uttermost Star 

vanish, and I shall know what those things are that 
still stand bravely out when everything else is lost in 
the infinite distance.' 

And so I set out on my breathless flight. I 
cannot tell you how far I went. In a second or two 
I lost sight of the houses and the trees; in another I 
could no longer distinguish between the mountains 
and the plains. When next I glanced over my 
shoulder, the sea and the dry land were all as one. 
I could not tell where the one ended and the other 
began. And a moment later I had some difficulty 
in identifying the earth at all. I left the sun and 
the moon behind me before I paused for the first 
time ; and I paused many and many a time before I 
reached my journey's end. At last the space 
before me was one vast unbroken void. All the 
whirling globes were circling behind me. I went on 
and on, day after day, through nothing but one 
boundless and terrific wilderness of solitude. 

And then, just as I was thinking of taking my 
observations and returning, I found a new world! 
It was a lonely little world, a kind of astral outpost; 
the Ultima Thule of all the stellar systems. There 
it hung, poised in space, on the fringe of a vacant 
infinity! And there I paused. From the shores 
of this prodigal planet I surveyed the distant 
universe. There was something weirdly fantastic 
in seeing that universe, not as my dwelling-place 
enfolding me, but as a remote object on a far hori- 
zon. And what could I see of it? What were the 



The Uttermost Star 21 

things that stood clearly out, now that all the details 
were obscured? Of all the myriad objects that con- 
fused my sight when I dwelt upon the earth, I could 
now see clearly only two things. 

I had a vision of wondrous harmony! All things 
kept their course in perfect and glorious unity. 
There was no clash, no confusion, no discord any- 
where. This, surely, was what the patriarch meant 
when he said that the morning stars sang together! 
This, surely, was what the poet meant when he 
wrote of the music of the spheres! Out here, on the 
shores of the uttermost star, I was listening to the 
melodies of the universe; the song of the morning 
stars; the music of the spheres! 

And I had a vision of wondrous light! The only 
other thing that I could see was that the universe 
was luminous. Some of the worlds, I had noticed in 
passing, were blazing in appalling splendours of 
their own ; others were dead and cold, yet reflecting 
in their very barrenness the fierce glare that fell 
upon them from their brilliant neighbours. But at 
this distance I could not distinguish between the 
worlds that shone with a borrowed radiance and 
those that flamed with a lustre of their own. All 
that I could see was that the universe was all alight. 
Every world twinkled, glittered, burned, and shone ! 

Harmony — perfect, ceaseless, unbroken! 

Light — soft, resplendent, beautiful! 

These were the only things that were still discern- 
ible as I surveyed the universe from this lonely 



22 The Uttermost Star 

outpost. These, therefore, are the two greatest 
things upon it. 

II 

I have been on a visit to the Orient. And one 
memorable afternoon, when the sky was a vault of 
cloudless blue and all the earth was fair, I found 
myself wandering aimlessly but joyously among the 
soft green Syrian hills. I sat down on the side of a 
grassy knoll and feasted my eyes on the quiet beauty 
of this idyllic scene. Not many yards below me a 
little stream flowed gently past the foot of the slop- 
ing hillside and meandered through the silent valley. 
There was no laughter in its waters; they moved 
slowly and peacefully on. Reeds and rushes grew 
plentifully along its banks. All at once I realized 
that I was not alone. I heard first the bleating 
of sheep, and then, a little later, human footsteps. 
A shepherd came round the curve of the knoll, 
sauntering slowly, with his flock following at his 
heels. He was leading them down through the 
green pastures to the still waters. He did not notice 
me ; his attention seemed to be fastened on the reeds 
flourishing beside the stream. When he reached 
them he began to look about, examining them with a 
critical eye. One, a tall one, was bent, and drooped 
towards him. The sheep may have broken it in 
browsing there the day before; or perhaps a gust of 
wind had caught it. Anyway, it was broken. 
With a rough hand he snatched at it; looked it up 



The Uttermost Star 23 

and down disdainfully; doubled it at the point at 
which it was damaged before; and tossed it out on 
to the gently moving waters. Then he cut for 
himself another reed, a sturdier one, without flaw 
or fault of any kind. And as he led his flock gently 
along the banks of the stream, watching the poor 
broken reed floating away on the sluggish current, 
he worked away with deft and practised fingers, 
and out of the faultless reed he fashioned for him- 
self a flute. And when it was finished he put it to his 
lips, and, lo, the sweet, clear music filled all that 
peaceful valley ! 

Harmony! It was a vision of Harmony! 

When he paused to take breath and to look around 
upon his flock, I rose and approached him. Until 
then he had been unconscious of my presence. I sat 
sometimes talking with him and sometimes listening 
to the soft, sweet strains of his flute, until the 
approach of sunset reminded us that it was time 
to be moving. I walked with him up to the fold. 
The sheep appeared to resent my presence, and did 
not follow so closely at his heels as on their way 
down the valley earlier in the day. I watched him as 
he counted them and secured them for the night. 
And then he took me to his shepherd-hut some dis- 
tance up the hillside. It was dusk by the time we 
reached it. He took down a lamp from the shelf and 
lit it. It was an odd little lamp, shaped like a tiny 
urn, and the wick protruded from the spout. It 
smoked horribly. He had gone to the back of the 



24 The Uttermost Star 

hut for some sticks with which to Hght his fire. 
When he returned and found the place reeking with 
the evil odour of the smoke, he was angry with the 
lamp, and, lighting another, he blew this one out and 
flung it unceremoniously back to the shelf. The 
second lamp burned beautifully; the fire blazed up; 
and all the room was bright. 

Light! It was a vision of Light! 

After awhile the shepherd walked with me up the 
valley to my temporary home. It was a glorious 
starlit night : such a night as only the Orient knows. 
I bade him good-night at the door; and we parted. 
He went back to his hut and to his fold. I, tired out, 
went straight to bed. And that night I dreamed. 

I dreamed of the broken reed, crushed and crum- 
pled in the shepherd's hands, that I had seen floating 
away on the stream. 

And I dreamed of the lamp, the smoking lamp, 
extinguished so ruthlessly by the shepherd's hand, 
that I had seen thrown in disdain back to the shelf. 

Ill 

I have been on a visit to the Land of Long Ago. 
In a trice I crossed wellnigh thirty centuries. I 
found myself in old Jerusalem. And near the 
Beautiful Gate of the Temple I saw a crowd gath- 
ered together. And with wild, seraphic fire a 
prophet was addressing them. *He is coming!' he 
cried. 'He is coming ! The King is coming ! The 



The Uttermost Star 25 

Redeemer is coming! The Messiah is coming! He 
shall not cry, nor lift up, nor cause His voice to 
be heard in the street. A bruised reed shall He 
not break, and the smoking lamp shall He not 
quench — ' 

I was so startled that I hurried back across the 
centuries and sat down in this quiet study of mine 
to think. 

*A bruised reed shall He not break !' I thought of 
the reed, crumpled in the shepherd's hand, that I 
had seen floating on that Syrian stream. 

*A smoking lamp shall He not quench!' I 
thought of the lamp tossed in contempt upon the 
shepherd's shelf. 

What could it mean? What could it mean? 

IV 

And then I saw what it all meant. The shepherd's 
way is the easy way. He snatches at the bruised 
reed, crushes it, and tosses it away on to the moving 
waters. And he takes another that has never been 
bruised, and from it he draws his melodies. He 
flings the smoking lamp back to the shelf and takes 
a new and faultless one, and from it he gets the light 
that fills his home with brightness. Anybody could 
do that. But the Good Shepherd of whom the 
prophet speaks takes the hard way. With infinite 
pity and infinite patience He works away at the 
bruised reed until from it He woos the eternal 
harmonies. With infinite pity and infinite patience 



26 The Uttermost Star 

He trims and cleans the smoking lamp until from it 
He draws the light that never was on sea or shore. 

The bruised reed! The bruised reed represents 
the things that have never been of any use; the 
things that are marred in the making. From the 
bruised reed He gets His choicest harmony ! 

The smoking lamp! The smoking lamp repre- 
sents the things that have been useful, but have lost 
the usefulness they had. Once luminous, they have 
become loathsome; once shining, they now smoke. 
From the smoking lamp He gets His clearest light! 

From the bruised reed — Harmony! 

From the smoking lamp — Light! 

And Harmony and Light, as I saw from the 
shores of the uttermost star, are the two greatest 
things in the universe. 



Ill 

PICKING UP THE PILE LIGHT 

To passengers below — dressing in the cabins or 
breakfasting in the saloon — the measured and 
rhythmic throb of the engines was the only indica- 
tion that the great ship was in motion. After a 
smooth and uneventful run across the Bass Straits, 
the Loongana was gliding swiftly across the broad, 
unruffled waters of Port Philip Bay. In an hour's 
time we confidently hoped to be greeting friends 
ashore. But just then, to our profound disappoint- 
ment, the unexpected happened. Right ahead of 
us a long, low, leaden bank of fog lay languidly 
across the waters, blotting out all trace of land. 
The Loongana pushed her bows straight into it, and 
in a few minutes we could scarcely see the vessel's 
length in any direction. Clouds of grey, misty 
vapour drifted to and fro; and nothing was visible 
to us but a narrow circle of sea. The bells in the 
engine-room rang out sharply, communicating to 
the powerful turbines below the will of the officer 
high up on the bridge. The ship perceptibly 
slackened her pace. The bells rang out again, and 
the ship moved still more slowly. She simply 

27 



28 The Uttermost Star 

crawled. Her loud and raucous syren proclaimed 
to all the craft in the vicinity her sure approach. 
Every few minutes great, ghostly ships, lying at 
anchor, sprang suddenly out of the mist. We were 
almost up to them before we saw their tall and 
shadowy masts looming spectrally above us. More 
ringing of bells, and the engines stopped altogether. 
Then, after a pause, we crept cautiously forward 
again, like a man groping his way in the dark. 
The apparitions that came suddenly upon us, and 
that as suddenly vanished again, were all of them 
the ghosts of things movable. From not one of 
them could we glean any sure knowledge as to our 
exact position. Here is a clumsy old dredge; 
there lies a tall ship riding at anchor; yonder is a 
snorting little motor-boat. But nothing fixed; 
nothing stable; nothing reliable. We are whelmed 
in uncertainty. A little later came the change which 
I have set out to describe ; but at this stage we were 
enveloped in the haze and surrounded by objects 
from which our position could not with confidence 
be reckoned. 

Such an experience has three perils. There is 
the danger of getting into shallow water and going 
aground; there is the danger of running down some 
other vessel; and there is the danger of being our- 
selves run down. All three of these disasters are 
fairly common. I fancy I have noticed that the 
people who get into the shallows of life, and become 
stranded there, are invariably people who were 



Picking Up the Pile Light 29 

getting on very rapidly without being quite certain 
of their course. Although the horizon was by no 
means clear, and no fixed objects stood bravely out 
to guide them, they found a certain exhilaration in 
continuing at topmost speed. Unhappily, in such 
cases, the exhilaration does not last ; there is nothing 
particularly exhilarating in being stuck in the mud ! 
And, worse still, there is certainly nothing very 
exhilarating in being fast on a jagged reef! In 
either of these situations, a ship becomes a misery 
to herself and a menace to all the craft around her. 

I remember, years ago, seeing the Elginshire hard 
and fast on the rocks on the east coast of New 
Zealand. She had been wrecked on her maiden 
trip. There she stood, a fine vessel, as erect as a 
ship in port! It seemed incredible that, looking so 
trim and taut, she was nevertheless wrecked beyond 
redemption. The New Zealand Government event- 
ually ordered her to be blown up, lest other ships, 
seeing her lying there in apparent safety, should be 
decoyed by her to a similar fate. On the whole it 
is better to forfeit the exhilaration and to proceed 
slowly, with bells clanging and syrens screaming. 

And then of course, there is the risk of a colli- 
sion. It would be distinctly unpleasant to see, loom- 
ing darkly out of the mist, and bearing down upon 
us, the gigantic proportions of some huge liner, 
several times as large as our own ship ! It was thus 
that the Empress of Ireland perished in the fog on 
the St. Lawrence a few years ago. These deafening 



30 The Uttermost Star 

blasts on the syren are a contrivance for our own 
protection and for other people's. George Mac- 
Donald tells of a blind man who always carried 
a lantern. People used to ask him of what use the 
lantern could be to his sightless eyes. *I do not 
carry it,' he replied, *to prevent my stumbling over 
others, but to keep them from stumbling over me!' 
The man who, uncertain as to his course, goes 
calmly on, without in any way expressing his per- 
plexity, is courting a most terrible disaster. By his 
very silence he may easily destroy his own ship — 
or somebody else's. 

Yes, his own or somebody else's; and other 
people's ships are worth thinking about. Once, 
in my New Zealand days, I revisited England. 
Shall I ever forget the excitement of sighting the 
English coast and of anchoring in Plymouth Sound? 
We sent telegrams to the home folks, telling them 
the exact hour at which they might expect us next 
day. Then once more the great ship stood out to 
sea and began her voyage up the Channel. And, 
off the Nore, down came the fog! Down, too, to 
our unspeakable disgust, went the anchor! There 
we waited and waited and waited, half deafened by 
the screamings and hooting^s of the horns that 
answered to our own, and half blinded by the frantic 
efforts that we made to pierce the all-enshrouding 
mists and see the land near by! Presently the cap- 
tain came sauntering along the deck, a picture of 
colossal calm. 



Picking up the Pile Light 31 

'This is very exasperating,' I observed. *We sent 
sent telegrams from Plymouth, telling the people at 
home when to meet us, and they'll be waiting at the 
docks now. Is there no possibility of getting on?' 

'AH very fine for you!' the skipper replied 
cheerily. 'You are on a ten-thousand ton liner. 
And you would like me to go on up the river, 
crumpling up everything we happen to strike as 
though it were made of brown paper! No, no; 
we've got the other ships to think of 1' 

To be sure ! We have the other ships to think of. 
Many a time since, when the thick fogs have en- 
veloped me, and I have been uncertain of my course, 
and have nevertheless been tempted to go full steam 
ahead, I have recalled the old sea captain's rebuke. 
There are others to think of. 

But I spoke just now of the change that came 
later. It came quite suddenly. All at once the 
clamorous bells in the engine-room became busy 
again. The powerful turbines at the stern are once 
more churning the water into foam, and very soon a 
broad wake lies out behind the steamer. She is 
moving forward, not timorously, but with obvious 
confidence. What has happened to effect so striking 
a change? Ah! Away to the right we can make 
out through the haze the rude, ungainly timbers of 
the Pile Light. It is not much to look at; but it is 
at least a fixture. It is something to argue from. 
A shag stands perched upon it, craning his neck 
and staring timidly at us. Perhaps the strange 



32 The Uttermost Star 

appearance of the enshrouded ship alarms him, for, 
when we get abreast of him, he spreads his wings 
and, keeping close to the surface of the water, flies 
to a more distant perch. Going at this rate we soon 
penetrate the bank of fog. The land breaks sud- 
denly upon us. We are out in the sunshine again. 
The low, leaden wall of mist lies gloomily across the 
bay behind us. Before us are wharves, houses, trees, 
the entrance to the river, and the city in the dis- 
tance. The sighting of the Pile Light made just all 
the difference. 

It always does. He is the skilful mariner whose 
vigilant and practised eye is swift to discern, amidst 
the haze of shifting things, life's fixed and stable 
qualities. The captain on the bridge saw the Pile 
Light long before I did. I felt the new and confident 
movement of the ship, and looked about in surprise 
for an explanation of the change. The sighting of 
the Pile Light marked the transition from doubt to 
certainty. And life knows no greater transition 
than that. Those who have followed the adventures 
of George Fielding in It is Never Too Late to Mend 
will remember the search for the lost cattle. George 
took Jacky, the black fellow, and they set out under 
a broiling Australian sun. Presently Jacky broke 
the silence abruptly. 

*I find one,' said he. 

* Where? Where?' cried George, looking all 
round. Jacky pointed to a rising ground at least 
six miles off. 



Picking up the Pile Light 33 

George groaned. 'Are you making a fool of 
me ? I can see nothing but a barren hill with a few 
great bushes here and there. You are never taking 
those bushes for beasts?' 

Jacky smiled with utter scorn. 'White fellow 
stupid fellow ; he see nothing.' 

'Well, and what does black fellow see?' snapped 
George. 

'Black fellow see a crow coming from the sun, and 
when he came over there he turned and went down 
and not get up again a good while. Then black 
fellow say, "I think!" Presently come flying one 
more crow from that other side where the sun is not. 
Black fellow watch him, and when he come over 
there he turn round and go down too, and not get 
up a good while. Then black fellow say, "I 
know!" ' 

They tramped the six miles, climbed the hill, 
and found one of George's best bullocks at its last 
gasp, with tongue protruding, a crow perched upon 
its ribs. 

7 think!' said Jacky to himself; and in his uncer- 
tainty he simply sauntered by his puzzled master's 
side, and kept his eyes wide open. 

7 know!' said Jacky; and with that brave con- 
fession came his master's enlightenment and a new 
and brisker pace. 

7 think!' said the captain of the Loongana; and 
we crawled slowly and painfully and cautiously 
forward. 



34 The Uttermost Star 

7 know!' said the captain of the Loongana on 
sighting the Pile Light; and the whole behaviour 
of the ship was changed. 

Life holds few greater transitions than that not- 
able transition from the realm of 7 think!' to 
the realm of 7 know!' Carlyle never forgot the 
hour of that transition. 'It is from that hour,' he 
says, 'that I date my spiritual new birth, or Bapho- 
metic Fire-Baptism; perhaps I directly thereupon 
began to be a man!' 'What was it,' asks Dr. 
Fitchett, in his Life of Wesley, 'what was it that 
happened in that little room in Aldersgate Street on 
the night of May 24, 1738? Something did happen; 
something memorable; something enduring. It 
changed Wesley's life. It transfigured weakness 
into power. Nay, it did something more : it changed 
the course of history.' And what was it? It was, 
Dr. Fitchett says, the passage of Wesley's soul from 
the realm of doubt to the realm of certainty. That 
night Wesley sighted the Pile Light; caught a 
glimpse of things that are immovable; and his life 
took on a new spirit and a new temper in conse- 
quence. 

A very similar experience visited the soul of John 
Bunyan. 'After I had been in this miserable 
condition some three or four days, as I was sitting 
by the fire, I suddenly felt this word to sound in 
my heart, "I must go to Jesus/' At this my former 
darkness and atheism fled away, and the blessed 
things of heaven were set in my view. While I 



Picking up the Pile Light 35 

was on this sudden thus overtaken with surprise, 
**Wife," said I, ''now I know! / know!" Oh, 
that night was a good night to me. I never knew 
but few better. I longed for the company of some 
of God's people, that I might have imparted to 
them what God had showed me. Christ was a 
precious Christ to my soul that night. I could 
scarce lie in bed for joy and peace and triumph 
through Christ!' Bunyan had sighted the Pile 
Light. 

It is wonderful how little we need to see. The 
captain on the bridge could not see the land, nor the 
houses, nor the trees, nor any of the thousand and 
one things that he could generally see from that 
spot. But he could see one fixed object, and that 
sufficed him. I used to think that, before my soul 
could move forward with confidence, she must see 
everything. I thought that, before I could venture 
with any assurance upon the religious life, I must 
understand the story of Creation, must grasp the 
wonder of the miracles, must have some theory of 
the Atonement, must understand the Inspiration of 
the Scriptures, and must be able to prove the immor- 
tality of the soul. I fancied that it was necessary, 
before proceeding with confidence, to see the trees 
and the houses and the towers of the distant city. 
'Unless all these are clear to me,' I said to myself, 
*I can never make the port!' I have since dis- 
covered my mistake. I do not need to see the houses 
and the trees and the things along the shore ; I only 



36 The Uttermost Star 

need to see the Pile Light. I do not need to see 
everything; I only need to see something. 

I have a life with Christ to live, 

But, ere I live it, must I wait 
Till learning can clear answer give 

Of this and that book's date? 
I have a life in Christ to live, 

I have a death in Christ to die ; 
And must I wait till Science give 

All doubts a full reply? 

Nay, rather, while the sea of doubt 

Is raging wildly round about. 

Questioning of life and death and sin, 

Let me but creep within 

Thy fold, O Christ, and at Thy feet 

Take but the lowest seat. 

And hear Thine awful voice repeat 

In gentlest accents, heavenly sweet, 

'Come unto Me and rest; 

Believe Me and be blest 1* 

That is all; but it is enough. It is not every- 
thing; but it is the Pile Light standing out bravely 
through the mist. As soon as we saw the Pile Light, 
we quickly left the fog behind us. So did Bunyan. 
'Wife,' said he, 'I must go to Jesus!' And 'at 
this my former darkness and atheism fled away, 
and the blessed things of heaven were set in my 
view.' That is the precise counterpart of our expe- 
rience in the Bay. 

'What are your speculations ?' asked a friend who 
stood beside the death-bed of Michael Faraday. 



Picking up the Pile Light 37 

^Speculations?' he replied in astonishment. *Spec- 
ulations? I have none. I know whom I have be- 
lieved. I rest my soul upon certainties !' 

It is a great thing, when the mists of death are 
closing in on every side, to approach the last report 
with the outline of the Pile Light in full view ! 



IV 

MARJORIE 

Marjorie is ninety-two, although you would never 
suspect it. Her hair is as black as it was when, more 
than seventy years ago, her tall young lover first 
stroked it. Marjorie is English — as English as 
English can be. The fact stares you in the face as 
soon as you put your hand to the latch of her gate. 
For the littk front garden is the condensed essence 
of England. It is as English as the garden of a 
Kentish cottage. You inhale the scent-laden Eng- 
lish air as you walk down the path to Marjorie's 
door. You drink in the fragrance of the roses and 
the wallflowers, the sweet-peas and the jasmine, 
the carnations and the gillyflowers, the musk and 
mignonette; and then, as you pause for a moment 
in the porch, awaiting the opening of the door, the 
soft petals of the honeysuckle brush against your 
face. They must all be flowers of rich perfume to 
be of any use to Marjorie now, for Marjorie is blind. 
I had been in conversation with her for some time 
before I realized that the eyes that seemed to look 
so wistfully into mine were unable to convey any 
impression to her alert and hungry mind. Her 
sightless eyes and the slight stoop at the shoulders 

38 



Marjorie 39 

are the only indications that she gives you of her 
heavy burden of years. She cannot see the pictures 
on the wall, representing the scenes of her childhood 
— the village street with its comfortable inn and its 
odd medley of stores; the thickly wooded lane in 
which she so often found nuts and blackberries; the 
fields of golden buttercups; and the village green 
with its rustic seats and shady grove of oaks. She 
cannot see these pictures now; but she says that 
the scenes all come back to her, as clearly as if she 
had visited them yesterday, when she sits out in the 
porch, luxuriating in the fragrance of the flowers, 
listening to the droning of the bees, and enjoying the 
song of the thrush who sings to her from his perch 
in the lilac by the side of the house. 

Even if I, like Marjorie, live to be ninety-two, I 
shall never forget that first visit that I paid her. 
It came about very simply. *I wish,' said a gentle- 
man, as he left the service on Sunday morning, *I 
wish you could find time to call on my old mother. 
She would appreciate it.' He gave me the address, 
and I set out the very next day, little dreaming that 
so very ordinary a mission was destined to bring 
into my life so wealthy an enrichment. Very 
abruptly sometimes life's casual ministries unlock 
for us the gates of gold. We turn a bend in a dusty 
road, and catch a glimpse of Paradise. We reach 
unexpectedly the brow of a hill, and obtain a vision 
of infinity. So was it with me that day. 

As I sat in the cosy little parlour awaiting the old 



40 The Uttermost Star 

lady's entrance, I expected that I should have to 
make the conversation, and I wondered how I could 
best secure that it should serve some profitable end. 
I smile now at the ignorance that led me into such 
a line of cogitation. I had not then met Marjorie. 
When she entered the room, the conversation made 
itself. I had simply nothing to do with it. I came 
to minister; but I found myself being ministered to. 
Not for a moment do I suggest that Marjorie was 
what Bunyan would call a brisk talker on matters 
of religion. She was far too reverent and far too 
modest for that. I mean rather that she had some- 
thing really great to say, and she said it really 
greatly. Hers was the grand style, glorified by 
transparent sincerity. Her speech was dignified 
and stately, whilst her voice was tremulous with 
deep emotion. There was a majesty about her very 
diction. She employed phrases that are never now 
heard, and that are only to be found in the mellow 
pages of a school book never now read. Outside 
a second-hand bookshop you may often see a box 
into which the desperate dealer has thrown all his 
rubbish, offering it to an unappreciative public at 
a nominal price of a penny a volume. To turn over 
this ill-assorted collection of literary flotsam and 
jetsam is as interesting and pathetic as to wander 
through the casual ward of a workhouse. No two 
cases are alike, yet all have come to this! Here in 
the box is a Spanish grammar, badly torn; there, 
too, is the second part of a three-volume novel. 



Marjorie 41 

Like Euclid's ideal circle, it is without beginning and 
without ending. Yonder is the guide-book to a 
long- forgotten exhibition. Such a higgledy-piggledy 
box! But if you delve a little more deeply, you 
will be sure to come upon some old volumes of 
eighteenth-century sermons. The leather backs are 
badly broken, and the leaves are yellow with age. 
But if you will sacrifice the necessary penny and go 
to the trouble of carrying one of these old volumes 
home, you will find the very vocabulary to which I 
listened as I sat that day in Marjorie's pretty little 
parlour. Yet, as this dead language fell from 
Marjorie's lips, it came to life again! It was full 
of energy and vigour; it was instinct with spiritual 
significance and with holy passion. It throbbed and 
quivered and glowed and flashed. It was as if some 
ancestral castle that had stood deserted and gloomy 
for a century had been suddenly inhabited, and was 
now ablaze with light and vibrant with shouts and 
laughter. The antique phrases simply sparkled 
with vitality as they tripped from her tongue. It 
was, as I say, a great story greatly told. Marjorie 
had been buffeted in a long, stern struggle; she had 
known heart-break and agony and tears; yet her 
memory remained at ninety-two absolutely un- 
clouded, and her lip retained its power of forceful 
utterance. And sitting there in her cosy parlour, 
whilst the breath of the garden came pouring in 
through the open window, did Marjorie unfold to 
me the treasures of her rich experience. 



42 The Uttermost Star 

*Ah, yes/ she replied, with a smile, when I made 
some reference to the remarkable length of her 
pilgrimage, *I was only a girl when I entered into 
the sweetness of religion.* The phrase, illumined 
by that bright though sightless smile, and interpreted 
by accents so full of feeling, fastened upon my 
memory at once. 'The sweetness of religion/ *I 
was only a girl when I entered into the sweetness of 
religion!' And then she went on to tell me of the 
rapture of her first faith. Seventy-five years earlier, 
religion had come into her life like a great burst of 
song. Amidst the sunshine of an English summer- 
time, whilst the fields were redolent of clover and 
of new-mown hay, her girlish soul had sought and 
found the Saviour. Instantly the whole world had 
stood transfigured. Her tongue seemed to catch 
fire as she told me of the radiant experiences of those 
never-to-be-forgotten days. I saw, as I listened, 
that the soul has a rhetoric of its own, an eloquence 
with which no acquired oratory can compare. She 
told of the joy that she found in her own secret 
communion with the Lord, sometimes in the quiet- 
ude of her little room — the room w^ith the projecting 
lattice window from which she loved to watch the 
mists rising from the hollow as the sun came up over 
the hills; sometimes down among the alders along 
the banks of the stream, sitting so still that the 
rabbits would scurry up and down the green banks 
without taking the slightest notice of her; some- 
times in long, delicious rambles across the open park 



Marjorie 43 

— rambles in which she was only disturbed by the 
swish of a frightened pheasant or the tramp of 
fallow deer; and sometimes amidst the leafy 
seclusion of the primrosed woods. And often, at 
sunset, when Dapple and Brownie had been milked, 
and the tea-things put away, she would take her 
knitting and saunter down the dusty old road. And 
as, one by one, the stars peeped out, and the nightin- 
gale called from the woods in the valley, and glow- 
worms shone in the grass under the hedge, and a bat 
flapped and fluttered in its queer flight round her 
head, it seemed as though the miracle of Emmaus 
were repeated, and Jesus came and walked with her. 
She spoke of the wonders that, under such con- 
ditions, broke upon her spirit like a light from 
heaven. Her Bible became a new book to her; and 
an unspeakable glory fell upon the village sanctuary, 
the dearest spot on earth to her in those days of long 
ago. A wave of happy recollection sw^ept over her 
as she told of the walks along the lanes and across 
the fields, in the company of a group of kindred 
spirits, to attend those simple but memorable 
services. The path led through a tossing sea of hare- 
bells and cowslips; the lane was redolent of 
hawthorn and sweet-brier. As they made their 
way to the church that peeped shyly through the 
foliage of the clump of elms on the hill, the solemn 
monotone of its insistent bell mingled with the 
chatter of the finches in the hedges and the blither 
note of the lark high up in the blue. Marjorie's 



44 The Uttermost Star 

blind eyes almost shone as she recalled, and, with 
glowing tongue, recounted, all these precious and 
beautiful memories. 'I was only a girl,' she said, 
'when I entered into the sweetness of religion!' 

*But,' I interjected, *you speak of the sweetness 
of religion as though it were a thing of long ago. 
Do you mean that it became exhausted? Did that 
happy phase of your Christian experience fade 
away?' 

A cloud passed over her face like the shadow that, 
on a summer's afternoon, will sometimes float over 
the corn. 

*0h, well, you know,' she replied, after a thought- 
ful pause, 'the tone of one's life changes with the 
years. I left my girlhood behind me. I married; 
children came to our home in quick succession; life 
became a battle rather than a frolic; and sometimes 
the struggle was almost grim. Then troubles fell 
thick and fast upon me. In one dreadful week I 
buried two of my boys, one on the Tuesday and the 
other on the Friday. Then, last of all, my husband, 
the soul of my soul, the best man I have ever known, 
was snatched rudely from my side.' 

Marjorie hid her face for a moment in her hands. 
At last my impatience compelled me to break the 
silence. 

*And do you mean,' I inquired, 'do you mean 
that, under the stress of all this sorrow, you lost the 
sweetness of religion f 

'Well,' she replied thoughtfully, 'under such con- 



Marjorie 45 

ditions you would scarcely speak of sweetness. I 
would rather say that, during those sterner years, 
I entered into the power of religion/ 

A ring, almost of triumph, came into her voice. 

*Yes,' she said, 'in those years I entered into 
the power of religion. Only once did my faith really 
stagger. It was on the night of that second funeral 
— that second funeral within a single week! I was 
kneeling in my own room on the spot on which I had 
knelt, morning and evening, through all the years. 
But I could not pray. I felt that God had failed 
and forsaken me. My shrine was empty, and I 
burst into tears. And then, all at once, a Hand 
seemed laid gently upon my shoulder and a Voice 
sounded in my ear. *'Am I a man that I should 
lie?" it said. I was startled. I felt chastened and 
rebuked. I had treated Him as though He were 
no wiser than I, and as though He had broken His 
word. Then, through my tears, I prayed as I had 
never been able to pray before. A great peace 
soothed my broken spirit. I was ashamed of my 
distrust. It was the only time my faith had 
wavered. No; I should not speak of sweetness as I 
recall those years of bitter sorrow and sore struggle. 
In those days I entered into the power of religion!' 

'But now look, Marjorie,' I pleaded, 'you tell me 
that, as a girl, you entered into the sweetness of 
religion, and that, in the graver years that followed, 
you entered into the power of religion. But your 
girlhood and your struggle have both passed now, 



46 The Uttermost Star 

and here you are in this quiet little cottage looking 
back across the intervening years at those far-away 
periods. Would you say that you now enjoy the 
sweetness or the power?' 

Her face shone; it was almost seraphic. Her 
whole being became suddenly animated and 
luminous. She reached out her hands towards me 
as though she held something in each of them. 

'I have them both!' she cried in a perfect trans- 
port of delight. 'I have them both! The sweetness 
that I knew in my English girlhood has come back 
to me in the days of my old age; and the power that 
came to me in the years of trial and loss has never 
since forsaken me. I have them both; oh, bless 
His holy Name, / have them both!' 

It was too much for her. Overcome by the rush 
of recollection and the tempest of exultant emotion, 
she sank back in her chair and lapsed into silence. 

*Why, Marjorie,' I said, *you have given me the 
very thing I wanted. As I walked along the road I 
was wondering what I should preach about on 
Sunday. But I know now. I shall preach on those 
words from the swan-song of Moses in which the 
old leader, in laying down his charge, bears grateful 
witness to God's goodness to Israel. "He made 
him," he says, "to suck honey out of the rock." I 
was reading in a book of travel only yesterday that 
in the Orient the wild bees store their honey in the 
crevices among the cliffs, and on a hot day you may 
see it trickling down the face of the granite in shin- 



Marjorie 47 

ing streams of sweetness ! As a girl, you say, you 
entered into the sweetness of religion. As a girl, 
girl-like, you gave little thought to the rock itself, 
but you loved to taste the sweetness of the honey. 
You entered into the sweetness of religion! But, as 
a woman, in the turmoil and tussle of life, buffeted 
and storm-beaten, you forgot the honey that oozed 
from the cracks and fissures, and were glad to feel 
the massive strength of the rock itself beneath your 
feet. You entered into the power of religion! And 
now, the fury of the storm all overpast, you tell me 
that you still rest upon the great rock, rejoicing in 
its firmness; and, as in your earlier days, you once 
more enjoy the honey that exudes from its recesses. 
You enjoy both the strength and the sweetness ; you 
have them both! *'With honey out of the rock have 
I satisfied thee!" I shall certainly preach on that 
text on Sunday !' 
And I did. 



V 

CAMOUFLAGE 

New occasions teach new duties — and new dictions. 
The War has given us a new word, and a very 
interesting one. 'Camouflage' has become a 
commonplace. In its original French setting it 
simply means to be concealed in smoke. I fancy I 
detect in it a hint that very noisome things may be 
made to serve very noble ends. The big battleships 
certainly thought so. When harassed by the fatal 
but elusive submarines, the huge Dreadnoughts 
hid themselves behind thick screens of impenetrable 
smoke, and were saved by camouflage. Having 
once been applied to tactics of the kind, the vivid 
expression was soon used to connote a multitude of 
similar manoeuvres. Guns cunningly concealed 
amidst waving forestry; men smothered with wisps 
of hay or fronds of fern or twigs of trees; ships 
painted with fantastic designs, calculated to conceal 
their true identity, — all this has come to be known 
as camouflage. Ian Hay quotes Major Wagstaffe 
as saying that 'you can now disguise anything as 
anything. For instance, you can make up a battery 
of six-inch guns to look like a flock of sheep, and 

48 



Camouflage 49 

herd them into action browsing. Or you can dis- 
patch a scouting party across No Man's Land 
dressed up as pillar-boxes, so that a deluded enemy, 
instead of opening fire with a machine-gun, will 
merely post letters in them — valuable letters, con- 
taining military secrets !' This, surely, is the perfec- 
tion of camouflage ! 

If, however, the word is new to us, the thing itself 
is as old as the hills. Has not Sir Walter Scott told 
us how, at Flodden, the Scottish army set fire to its 
tents and charged the English host under cover of 
the smoke? Moreover, camouflage is the watch- 
word of the wilds. In his Tropical Africa Henry 
Drummond does not use the word, but he has a 
chapter about it all the same. Nature, he says, is one 
vast system of imposture. ^Carlyle in his black- 
est visions of shams and humbugs among human- 
kind never saw anything so finished in hypocrisy as 
the naturalist finds in every tropical forest. There 
are to be seen creatures, not singly, but in tens of 
thousands, w^hose very appearance, down to the mi- 
nutest spot and wrinkle, is an affront to truth, whose 
every attitude is a pose for a purpose, and w^hose 
whole life is a sustained lie. Before these master- 
pieces of deception the most ingenious of human 
impositions are vulgar and transparent. Fraud is 
not only the great rule of life in a tropical forest, but 
the one condition of it.' And then he proceeds to 
give examples. One day he found a bit of dried 
grass lying on his shoulder. The natives cried out in 



50 The Uttermost Star 

alarm and pointed to it. Drummond could not 
understand their excitement. He picked up the 
grass and examined it. They cried out that it was 
*chirombo' — it was alive ! He was incredulous, but 
they soon proved to him that their statement was 
true. It was an insect practising camouflage. Half 
a dozen pages farther on the Professor gives a 
photograph of a leaf-insect. To look at the picture, 
you could declare that it was a leaf, pure and simple. 
The shape is the shape of a leaf; there is the stem, 
sturdy at the base and tapering away towards the 
point ; there are the fibres running out from the main 
stem towards the rough edges; in every minutest 
particular the thing is a precise replica of the leaves 
round about it. But, again, it is an insect — an 
insect practising camouflage ! And then the narra- 
tive takes an almost tragic turn. One of the most 
beautiful and ornate of all the tropical reptiles, and 
one of the most deadly, is the puff-adder. 'It is 
essentially a forest animal, its true habitat being 
among the fallen leaves in the deep shade of the trees 
by the banks of streams. Now, in such a position, 
at the distance of a foot or two, its appearance so 
exactly resembles the forest bed as to be almost 
indistinguishable from it. I was once just throwing 
myself down under a tree to rest when, stooping to 
clear the spot, I noticed a peculiar pattern among the 
leaves. I started back in horror to find a puff-adder 
of the largest size, its thick back only visible, and its 
fangs within a few inches of my face as I stooped. 



Camouflage 51 

It was lying concealed among fallen leaves so like 
itself that, but for the exceptional caution which in 
African travel becomes a habit, I should certainly 
have sat down upon it, and to sit down upon a puff- 
adder is to sit down for the last time.' The loath- 
some brute was practising a camouflage which al- 
most deprived the world of one of the most 
gracious and inspiring ministries of the nineteenth 
century. 

But we need not have gone to Central Africa. 
Camouflage is everywhere. I find it in my Bible. 
David resorted to camouflage on a very famous 
occasion. He was a monarch, and he tried to pass 
himself off as a maniac! *He feigned himself mad 
in their hands, and scrabbled on the doors of the 
gate, and let his spittle fall down upon his beard.' 
David Livingstone's great-grandfather, Gavin 
Hunter, was once thrown into Hamilton Jail for a 
technical offence which, in point of fact, was rather 
to his credit than otherwise. But just at that time 
all prisoners were being shipped off to the wars or 
to the plantations. Poor Gavin was in great trouble. 
He thought of his wife and his three little children, 
who would starve if he were sent overseas. In his 
distress he turned to his Bible, and chanced to light 
upon this very passage concerning David. He 
resolved to adopt a similar ruse. When the sergeant 
visited his cell, he was astounded. Then, pitying 
poor Gavin, he interrupted his ravings by asking a 
question. 'Tell me, gudeman,' he said, 'are you 



52 The Uttermost Star 

really out of your mind? I'll befriend you.' Gavin 
detected a note of sympathy in his voice, and told 
the whole story. The sergeant reported the affair 
to the officer in charge of the jail, who visited Gavin 
in person. 'Tak' that, gudeman,' he said, giving 
him some silver, 'and gang awa' hame to your wife 
and your weans!' David Livingstone's mother 
told her distinguished son this story of successful 
camouflage on her death-bed, in the course of the 
explorer's visit to Scotland in 1864. 'Ay,' she said, 
smiling, *and mony a prayer went up from our hame 
for that sergeant, for my grandfather was an unco 
godly man. He never had so much money in his 
life before!' A curious story this of deliverance 
and enrichment by way of camouflage. 

I confess to a little surprise that Professor Drum- 
mond should charge the leaf-insect, the puff-adder, 
and all the other artists of the wild with hypocrisy. 
Are they really hypocritical? We must distinguish 
between things that differ; and there is all the 
difference In the world between camouflage and 
hypocrisy. Hypocrisy is the attempt of a mean 
thing to pass Itself off as a mighty thing; camouflage 
is the attempt of a mighty thing to pass Itself off as a 
mean thing. If a cloud of smoke tries to pass itself 
off as a battleship, that Is hypocrisy; but If a battle- 
ship tries to pass Itself off as a cloud of smoke, that 
Is camouflage ! If a fallen tree tries to pass itself off 
as a big gun, that Is hypocrisy; but If a big gun tries 
to pass itself off as a fallen tree, that Is camouflage! 



Camouflage 53 

Aesop has a fable entitled 'The Ass in the Lion's 
Skin.' Now an ass in a lion's skin is not practising 
camouflage; he is playing the hypocrite, that is all. 
But if, on the other hand, a lion were to don the skin 
of an ass, he would be resorting to camouflage! If 
a scarecrow ever scared a crow — and there is no 
record of such a wild improbability — he scared him 
by his downright hypocrisy. But if, in order to 
watch a house in which a burglary is expected, a 
detective posts himself in the garden in the guise of 
a scarecrow, that detective is practising the arts of 
camouflage ! There is clearly an essential difference 
between an old broom and a suit of clothes mas- 
querading as a man, and a man pretending to be only 
an old broom and a suit of clothes. The one is a 
humbug; the other is a tactician. 

The most pathetic instance known to me of the 
use of camouflage occurs in Ian Maclaren's Dnims- 
heugWs Love Story. All the Glen knew Drums- 
heugh as the man of the close fist, mean, hard, nig- 
gardly. He drove every bargain to the uttermost 
farthing. At last he grew to be old; he was nearly 
eighty. He looked round and discovered that all the 
comrades of his early days, and all the friends of his 
lustier years, had dropped into their graves — all but 
one. That one was William Maclure, the doctor of 
Drumtochty. And then a strange desire awoke the 
soul of Drumsheugh. He felt that, before he too 
went the way of all flesh, he should like to open his 
heart to the doctor, and tell him the secret that had 



54 The Uttermost Star 

been buried in his breast for years. One cruel 
winter's day the doctor, almost frozen, came riding 
on Jess, his brave little pony, up the Glen, fighting 
his way through the deep snow-drifts. Drumsheugh 
called him in, sat him by the fireside and entertained 
him royally. Then the two old men sat looking 
into the dying embers, seeing visions of the days of 
auld lang syne. The hour had come. Drumsheugh 
unlocked his lips, and told his tale. 

As a youth he had loved Marget, the sweetest girl 
in all the Glen. He had counted it heaven to look 
into her winsome face, to listen to her soft rich voice, 
to watch her gentle ways. Once, in a cornfield, her 
soft hand had touched his, and the thrill of that 
exquisite moment had been with him all down the 
years. Once she dropped a flower, and he had 
treasured it, even to grey hairs. But he had never 
found the courage to declare his love; and one 
summer evening she met him by chance, at a stile 
across the fields, and told him that she was going to 
be married! Poor Drumsheugh clung to the stile, 
dazed, for hours, like a man suddenly bereft of 
everything. 

Marget married, and everything went ill with her. 
And then Drumsheugh made his brave resolve. 
He scraped and pinched and saved; and sent every 
penny to her through a firm of solicitors, who were 
instructed to say that it came from a relative in 
America. But for this, Marget would have been 
turned out of house and home; she could never have 



Camouflage 55 

paid the doctor's bills ; she could never have sent her 
boy to college. 

*Drumsheugh,' cried the doctor at last, 'Drums- 
heugh, ye're the maist accomplished leer 'at's ever 
been born in Drumtochty, an' . . . th' best man a' 
ever saw !' 

Now here is the question. Was Drumsheugh a 
hypocrite? How could he be a hypocrite, and yet 
be the best man that the old doctor had ever seen? 
He was an expert in camouflage, that was all ! 

But it was a mistake. Drumsheugh came to feel 
that it was a mistake. Marget, an old, old woman 
now, discovered the deception at last. She came to 
Drumsheugh and blessed him through her tears. 

'He took her hand, and made as though he would 
have raised it to his lips, but, as he bent, she kissed 
him on the forehead. "This," she said, ''for yir 
great and faith fu' love!" ' 

Yes, it was a mistake. Drumsheugh felt that he 
would have been happier and better if he had 
contrived to maintain his noble and unselfish min- 
istry to Marget without gaining for himself so 
odious a reputation in the Glen. It was a poignant 
anguish to him that all his old schoolfellows and 
companions had gone down to their graves despising 
him. 

His camouflage was a mistake. Camouflage is 
often a mistake. I shall never forget the night on 
which I said farewell to Mosgiel. The manse — our 
home through twelve long, happy years — was 



56 The Uttermost Star 

dismantled; the rooms were almost empty; the 
walls and floors were bare. The farewell-meeting 
was held. It was late when I reached home to sleep 
for the last time under the old roof. Just as I was 
turning into the gate a figure emerged from the 
hedge. It was a woman; a young woman who, 
through all my ministry, had regularly attended the 
services of the church. She was weeping bitterly. 
I led her into the empty manse; she sat upon one 
packing-case, and I upon another. 

*Oh, I've been wicked, wicked, wicked !' she cried. 
*I've come to church, and gone out again, and I've 
always pretended that I did not care. And when 
you spoke to me, I told you that I did not wish 
to be a Christian or to take any step towards 
a holier life. And all the while my heart has been 
aching — almost breaking. When Communion 
nights came, and I saw other women remain to 
partake of it, I felt that I would give the light of my 
eyes to be able to sit at the Table with them; but 
I went out into the dark and laughed it off. And 
when, on other occasions, I saw other women help- 
ing in the work, I felt that I would give all I pos- 
sessed to be helping too. But I went through with 
it, and always said I did not care.' It was a great 
piece of camouflage; and bitterly did she repent it. 
We kneeled together on the bare boards, and whilst I 
prayed, her heart uttered itself in sobs of deep 
contrition. And so I said farewell to my old home 
and my old church, and she said farewell to her long, 



Camouflage 57 

long camouflage! I like to think of that closing 
episode of my first ministry; and I delight in know- 
ing that, whilst I have been labouring on other 
shores, she has remained among the most devoted 
and consistent members o\ the Mosgiel church. 



VI 
THE WHALER 



Whales are great sport. We have all done a little 
whaling in our time. I shall never forget the months 
that I spent amongst lances, harpoons, reels, lines, 
and blubber. There is no accounting for the 
vagaries of the law of association; and oddly 
enough, I cannot even think about whales without 
harking back to a certain lofty haystack that stood 
not very far from my old English home. I remem- 
ber, as vividly as though it were but yesterday, that I 
had spent a good part of one memorable winter 
curled up in my father's spacious arm-chair, reading 
all that R. M. Ballantyne, Mayne Reid, and Feni- 
more Cooper could tell me about Red Indians and 
grizzly bears. Now Red Indians and grizzly bears 
are first-rate, as every schoolboy knows ; but you can 
have too much even of a good thing; and, by the 
time that the fields were once more golden with 
buttercups, my familiarity with the furry wigwams 
and the Rocky Mountains had engendered an 
inevitable contempt. I had seen enough of the 
scalps of the braves and the skins of the bears to last 

58 



The Whaler 59 

me for many a long day ; and it was at this critical 
juncture that a whaling story fell into my hands. 
It swept me off my feet, took my soul by storm, 
captivated my whole imagination. I begged, 
borrowed, or bought all the tales of whaling adven- 
ture that were anywhere procurable. And when- 
ever, in the perusal of those thrilling pages, I heard 
from the crow's-nest the rousing cry of 'There she 
spouts !' I crept stealthily off to the haystack, and, 
sprawling at full length, enjoyed, without interrup- 
tion, the terrific excitements of the chase. My prone 
body sank of its own weight into the soft and 
odorous hay, rendering me quite invisible; and in 
this safe retreat I was dead to all the world, and all 
the world was dead to me. How many times on that 
old haystack I watched the huge monster describe 
his vast circles round the ship ! How many times 
I held my breath as he suddenly appeared, a tense 
mass of quivering rage, within a few yards of the 
boat! How many times I saw the glittering har- 
poon bury itself in his soft hot flesh, and heard the 
shriek of the rushing line as it flew from the whir- 
ring wheel ! How many times I found myself swim- 
ming for dear life after the infuriated creature had 
smashed our little boat to splinters! How often, 
too, I felt my cheeks flush with the fierce joy of cap- 
ture, and could scarcely believe my eyes when I 
looked round and discovered that, instead of being 
on the oily deck of a whaler, I was lying full length 
on the top of a haystack! 



6o The Uttermost Star 

II 

But how am I to account for this strange gust of 
recollection? It was my Bible that started it. At 
the opening of Job's penultimate chapter I came 
abruptly on a question that first made me smile, and 
then made me think — 'Canst thou catch a whale with 
a fish-hook F' If I, as an old whaler, understand 
the position rightly, it is designed, by this grotesque 
interrogation, to expose some very common fallacies. 
There is, for example, the folly of supposing that a 
whale can be caught with a fish-hook. Every 
whaler knows quite well that it is ludicrously im- 
possible. As an old whaler I can bear witness to 
the fact that the experience of life has taught me 
that there must be a certain proportion between the 
end that you hope to compass and the means that 
you employ in order to attain it. I have caught 
a minnow with a bent pin and a yard of string; but 
I have never been able to land a salmon with that 
gear. In Job the argument is pushed yet another 
step. To him the capture of a whale seemed a sheer 
impossibility. The ancients saw the huge beast dis- 
porting himself in the blue waters; but in their 
wildest imaginings they never dreamed that a day 
would come in which men would seek to make him 
their prey. And, indeed, it was not until about a 
thousand years ago that some hardy Norseman, of 
tough sinews and still tougher soul, conceived the 
idea of scouring the seas in pursuit of such big game. 



The Whaler 6i 

Job may have listened in awe to tales that sailors 
told concerning the frightful monsters they had seen 
upon the deep, and, if so, he was prepared for the 
question — 'Canst thou catch a whale with a fish- 
hook f You can catch a minnow with a bent pin; 
but not a salmon! You can catch a salmon with a 
hook ; but not a whale ! 

Old Peggy Dodson runs a flower-stall. For many 
a long year she has stood, summer and winter, at 
the corner of Princes and Edgecumbe streets, just 
against Barnards' great drapery store. Her violets 
and jonquils are said to be the best that can be got, 
and many of the great ladies who come in and out 
of Barnards' slip a big bunch of them into their 
motors before setting out for home. Peggy only 
aims at making a couple of pounds a week just to 
keep body and soul together, and she contrives to 
do it by the investment of a very modest capital. 
But Barnards' would not be content with a profit 
of a couple of pounds a week. Mr. Edward Barnard 
lives in a palatial residence out at Brockville Park. 
To keep things going he needs a profit a hundred 
times as large as Peggy's. And because he wishes 
to draw a hundred times as much out of his business, 
he puts a hundred times as much into his business. 
The sum that he pays out every week in rent, wages, 
and stock is amazing! But he signs those cheques 
with a light heart because he knows that, by a law 
that is as fixed as the law of gravitation, there must 
be a certain proportion between the end that you 



62 The Uttermost Star 

desire to compass and the means that you employ 
to attain it. You can't earn Barnards' profits by 
the investment of Peggy's capital. You can't catch 
whales with fish-hooks ! 

Many years ago I knew two sisters who were both 
Sunday-school teachers. Sheila was a lively girl, 
and everybody was very fond of her; but she rarely 
took things seriously. On Sunday, as soon as 
dinner was over, she got her Bible and her Teacher's 
Helps, to see what the lesson was all about. And 
then, marking a few passages that she thought might 
be read aloud to the scholars, she dotted down a few 
notes before scampering off to school. Sometimes, 
when dinner was late, or the conversation at table 
particularly interesting and protracted, she was 
compelled to study the lesson as she hurried down 
the streets, sometimes in company. Mary, on the 
other hand, regarded her class as part of life's great 
adventure. She allowed the coming Sunday's 
lesson to simmer in her mind all through the week, 
and found untold delight in wrestling with the 
various problems it presented. She was a welcome 
guest in the homes of all her boys; and if one of 
them failed to appear on the Sunday afternoon, 
Mary was like a hen with a missing chick. She even 
wove those roguish faces into her prayers, and, 
indeed, found it easier to admit them than to exclude 
them. Anybody who knew the two sisters as 
intimately as I did could see that Sheila was like 
Old Peggy, whilst Mary was like Mr. Barnard. 



The Whaler 63 

Sheila put very little into her class, and drew very 
little out; Mary lavished all her thought and de- 
votion upon it, and found in it the delight of her 
life. I have met many of those boys, now full- 
grown men, during the past twenty years. It is 
with difficulty that you can recall Sheila to the 
remembrance of those who once sat at her feet; she 
flitted into their lives and flitted out again without 
leaving any permanent impression at all. But 
Mary's boys brighten at the very mention of her 
name. 'Whenever I have been tempted to do a 
mean thing or neglect a duty,' one of them said to 
me not long ago, *I have thought of her; and the 
memory of her face has settled it!' And he spoke 
for them all. Sheila was angling with a piece 
of string and a bent pin; Mary was catching 
whales ! 

A mere novice in the art of living must have 
noticed that only the cheap prizes are cheaply won; 
the really precious things of life come to us through 
blood and agony and tears. And is not the kingdom 
of heaven to be numbered among those exceedingly 
precious things? Is it likely, therefore, that the 
kingdom of heaven can be cheaply gained? 

*Just put up your hand; now, while every head 
is bowed ; put up your hand, and the great transac- 
tion's done !' 

I was passing the Miller's Point Mission-hall. A 
stirring chorus led me to pause, and, after the sing- 
ing, these words fell upon my ear. It is not for me 



64 The Uttermost Star 

to judge. I had not listened to the address that had 
preceded this appeal. But, taken by themselves, the 
words seemed to me to imply that the salvation of 
the soul can be very cheaply secured. When I 
reached home I took down my Pilgrim's Progress, 
and reviewed afresh Christian's sustained and 
perilous exploit. And then I turned to the New 
Testament. The transition from the evangelist's 
appeal to these noble volumes on my table was like 
the transition from the angler's dangling line to the 
stern and hazardous struggle of the whaler. For 
my New Testament warns me on every page that 
whales are not to be caught with fish-hooks. Gold 
does not lie about the street-corners. The kingdom 
of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it 
by storm. I am to strive, to wrestle, to agonize, 
in my resolute and persistent endeavour to enter in 
at the strait gate. Only through much tribulation, 
so I am told, can I hope to enter the Kingdom. The 
New Testament writers were whalers, not anglers. 
Their phraseology is the phraseology of the fierce 
and desperate conflict; it throbs with vehemence 
and intensity; it is suggestive of long and anxious 
and sustained adventure. And who can help 
noticing that when it tells of one who set His face, 
like a flint, to win the greatest prize of all, it makes 
it clear that He only attained His end, and finished 
His work, and gained His crown after a struggle 
unparalleled in the annals of human enterprise and 
achievement? 



The Whaler 65 

III 

It is foolish to match the mean against the mighty. 
The contrast between the whale on the one hand 
and the angler's puny little line on the other is 
intended to provoke a smile. I should have loved 
to have seen old Izaak Walton's face when, in the 
course of his riverside devotions, he lit upon this 
passage! How could Job angle for a whale? As 
the following verses point out, 'he has no bait 
w^herewith to deceive him, no hook wherewith to 
catch him, no line wherewith to draw him out of the 
water, no reed to run through his gills, and no thorn 
on which to carry him home.' The whole conception 
is extraordinary, whimsical, grotesque. It is the 
wave fighting against the cliff, the mouse fighting 
against the lion, the pigmy fighting against the 
giant. What does it all mean? 

If good old Izaak Walton, resting under the alders 
on the green banks of the Itchen or the Dove, 
examined the context in order to ascertain the 
meaning of the curious inquiry, he must have found 
himself suddenly and startlingly transported from 
the realm of the ludicrous to the realm of the 
sublime. For see! 'Then answ^ered the Lord unto 
Job out of the w^hirlwind, and said. Canst thou catch 
a whale with a fish-hook f or his tongue with a line 
that thou lettest down? None is so fierce that dare 
stir him up : who then is able to stand against Mef 
Here is a swift transition from comedy to tragedy! 
At the beginning of the drama Job loses his asses, 



66 The Uttermost Star 

his oxen, his camels, his children, and his health. 
In the course of the years Job is tempted to murmur 
against God, and to impeach the justice of the Most 
High. And this is the answer that comes to him 
out of the whirlwind — *Canst thou catch a whale 
with a fish-hook? How then cartst thou stand 
against Me?' And Job humbles himself, and 
kisses the hand that he had spurned, and the great 
drama closes amidst the tears and smiles of 
reconciliation. 

At the opening and at the close of the inspired 
records I find two brave, heroic figures. In one 
respect these two — Job and Paul — are very much 
alike. The culminating point in the experience of 
Job was his discovery that his rebellion against the 
Divine Will was as futile and as foolish as the fish- 
ing-line with which an angler might endeavour to 
compass the destruction of a whale. The culminat- 
ing point in the experience of Paul was his discovery 
that his persecution of the infant Church was a raid 
upon Omnipotence. 'And he fell to the earth, and 
heard a voice saying unto him, Saul, Saul, why 
persecutest thou Me? And he said. Who art Thou, 
Lord? And the Lord said, I am Jesus whom thou 
persecutest; it is hard for thee to kick against the 
pricks!' And, like Job, Paul abandoned the 
unequal contest, and kissed the hand that he had 
sought to crucify. 

*How canst thou stand against Mef said the 
voice to Job. 



The Whaler 67 

'Why persecutest thou Mef said the voice to 
Paul. 

And Job and Paul both discovered that the day 
on which a man submits his stubborn heart to the 
will of heaven is the day on which all heaven comes 
pouring into that penitent and contrite heart. 



VII 

A BOX OF PERFUME 

The smell of things ! The smell of tilings ! What 
a box of perfume this old world of ours is, to be 
sure! I was reading only yesterday Mr. E. V. 
Lucas's Essay on Rupert Brooke. Mr. Lucas turns 
aside to chat entertainingly about his own tastes 
and fancies. T find/ he says, *that, on my list of 
loves, scents would take a very important place — 
the scent of gorse blossoms rubbed in the hand and 
then crushed against the face, the scent of geranium 
leaves or the leaves of the lemon verbena, the scent 
of pine-trees, the scent of unlit cigars, the scent of 
cigarette smoke blown my way from a distance, 
the scent of coffee as it arrives from the grocer's, 
the scent of the underside of those little cushions of 
moss which come away so easily in the woods, the 
scent of lilies of the valley, the scent of oatcake for 
cattle, the scent of lilac, and, for reasons, above all, 
perhaps, the scent of a rubbish fire in the garden.' 
Richard Jefferies has a notable passage of which this 
forcibly reminded me. 'There ain't nothing,' he 
makes his old gamekeeper say, 'there ain't nothing 

68 



A Box of Perfume 69 

to compare with the smell of the woods. You should 
just come out here in the spring and sniff up the 
scent of that there oak bark. It goes right down 
your throat, and preserves your lungs as the tan do 
leather. And I've heard say as folks who work in 
the tanyards never have no illness. There's always 
a smell from the trees, dead or living, and I could 
tell what wood a log was in the dark by my nose. 
The air is better where the woods be. There's the 
smell of the earth, too; 'specially just as the plough 
turns it up. It's a fine thing; and the hedges and 
the grass are as sweet as sugar after a shower.' 
But enough of this! I did not set out to catalogue 
the perfumes in the box; but to philosophize about 
them, and especially to ask myself the reason for 
their presence there. 

For, only this afternoon, I was sitting with some 
friends upon the lawn — itself an odorous place — 
telling of the holiday tour from which I have just 
returned. In doing so, I was impressed by the way 
in which memory revived, and description became 
easy, whenever I chanced to mention the smell of 
things. The smell of the bush; the smell of the 
earth; the smell of the hay; the smell of the hops; 
the smell of the hedges; the smell of the gardens, — 
at every such reference the beauty of the landscape 
rushed back upon my mind in vivid detail; and the 
tongue set off afresh with its pleasant task of 
reminiscence. 

I have noticed the same thing before. We have 



70 The Uttermost Star 

all noticed it. As Walter Savage Landor told us a 

hundred years ago, 

. . . sweet scents , 
Are the swift vehicles of still sweeter thoughts, 
And nurse and pillow the dull memory 
That would let drop without them her best stores. 
They bring me tales of youth and tones of love. 

Ah, to be sure, tales of youth ! As a small boy I was 
sent to a private school for a year or two to prepare 
for the public school to which I went later. I do 
not know how long I remained there. I possess a 
history-book bearing my name and the date in the 
schoolmaster's handwriting. This proves that I was 
there at the age of seven; but as only the earlier 
pages are marked, I conclude that I must have left 
for the larger school shortly after. It was often a 
matter of regret to me that I could recall so little 
of my first school. The whole thing seemed to have 
departed from my mind. I remembered only the 
exterior of the building, the death of the school- 
master, and a few very hazy impressions. But one 
day, more than twenty years afterwards, I was 
crossing a field and detected a peculiar odour. It 
arose from a plant upon which I had just trodden. 
Instantly the old school stood out before my mind as 
though I had only left it the day before. The porch, 
the schoolroom, the desk, the huge globes in the 
corner, the maps on the walls, the piano, the black- 
board, and a hundred tiniest details rushed to mind 
one after the other, and have remained vividly 



A Box of Perfume 7 1 

there ever since. The plant on which I had just 
trodden grew on the green bank behind the school, 
and we boys used to press the leaves in our hands 
and inhale the fragrance that distilled from our 
scented fingers when poring over our lessons later 
on. I had never come across a plant of that species 
through all the years that intervened. I must have 
seen a thousand sights and heard a thousand sounds 
that should have opened the floodgates of memory; 
yet they had not the magic power. Their 'Open, 
Sesame!' was unheeded. But the spell lurked in 
the scent of the grass; and, thanks to it, my old 
school is now clearly photographed upon the tablets 
of my memory. 

Here, then, is a singular thing: this connexion 
between a breath of perfume and a wave of memory ! 
It does not, of course, always work out pleasantly. 
No law does. One is reminded of Dickens. In his 
early days he lived through a dismal and humiliating 
experience. He earned his living in a blacking 
factory. 'My work,' he says, 'was to cover the 
pots of blacking, first with a piece of oil-paper, and 
then with a piece of string; and then to clip the 
paper close and neat, all round, until it looked as 
smart as a pot of ointment from an apothecary's 
shop.' During that year or so — he himself has no 
notion how long it lasted — his misery was so intense 
that, to the end of his days, he never referred to it. 
He worked from early morning until late at night, 
and could only manage to live on his meagre salary 



72 The Uttermost Star 

by dividing it into six little parcels, marking each 
parcel with a day of the week, and steadfastly re- 
fusing to break into Saturday's parcel until Saturday 
came. When the hunger was unendurable, he used 
to take a turn at Covent Garden and stare at the 
pineapples, sniffing up as he did so the flavour of the 
faded cabbage leaves that everywhere littered the 
place. Close to the cellar in which he worked was a 
hat factory which emitted an odour peculiarly its 
own. In due course the boy was delivered from this 
abject and degrading phase of his existence. But 
the memory of it haunted him like a spectre. *From 
that hour until this at which I write,' he says, in a 
letter written many years afterwards, *from that 
hour until this no word of that part of my childhood 
has passed my lips. From that hour until this my 
father and my mother have been stricken dumb 
upon it. I have never heard the least allusion to it, 
however far off and remote, from either of them. 
I have never in any burst of confidence with any one, 
my own wife not excepted, raised the curtain I then 
dropped, thank God.' And he tells us that to the 
close of his life, whenever he caught the smell of 
decayed cabbage leaves, the smell of hat-making, 
or the smell of blacking, a shudder ran through his 
frame as he recalled his early miseries. 'I never 
had the courage,' he says, 'to go back to the place. 
I could not endure to go near it. For many years, 
when I came near to Robert Warren's, in the Strand, 
I crossed over to the opposite side of the way, to 



A Box of Perfume 73 

avoid a certain smell of the cement they put upon the 
blacking-corks which reminded me of what I once 
was.' The novelist's bitter experience is very 
suggestive. The sight of hats, blacking-bottles, or 
cabbage leaves seems to have had no effect upon him. 
But the smell of any of them almost paralysed him. 
Beside this painful illustration relating to Charles 
Dickens, let me lay a pleasant illustration relating 
to George Gissing. T know men,' he makes Henry 
Ryecroft say, T know men who say they had as lief 
read any book in a library copy as in one from their 
own shelf. To me that is unintelligible. For one 
thing, I know every book of mine by its scent, and I 
have but to put my nose between the pages to be 
reminded of all sorts of things. My Gibbon, for 
instance, my well-bound eight-volume Milman 
edition, w^hich I have read and read and read again 
for more than thirty years, never do I open it but 
the scent of the noble pages restores to me all the 
exultant happiness of that moment when I received 
it as a prize. Or my Shakespeare, the great Cam- 
bridge Shakespeare, it has an odour which carries 
me yet farther back in life; for these volumes be- 
longed to my father, and before I was old enough 
to read them with understanding it was often 
permitted me, as a treat, to take down one of them 
from the bookcase and reverently to turn the leaves. 
The volumes smell exactly as they did in that old 
time, and what a strange tenderness comes upon 
me when I take one of them in hand !' So true is it 



74 The Uttermost Star 

that the smell of a thing is the soul of that thing. 
It is the one vital, essential element about it. The 
sight of a thing may kindle my curiosity; the sound 
of a thing may arouse my interest; but the smell of 
a thing, in some subtle and elusive fashion of its 
own, avoids all formal avenues of approach and 
takes possession of all the chambers of my mind at 
once. I wonder why ? Let us get back to the wilds 
and the woods again ! 

And here, in the wilds and the woods, let us 
introduce each other to two of the citizens of that 
romantic country, men who have been taken into 
its confidence and initiated into its secrets. Here is 
Captain C. H. Stigard, a big-game hunter ; and here 
is Frank Buckland, the celebrated naturalist. Let 
us take the Captain first. He has written a delight- 
ful book on Hunting the Elephant in Africa. And, 
oddly enough, he touches on the very point that 
we have been discussing. *I believe,' he says, 
'I believe the sense of smell is in much more direct 
connexion with the brain than is the sense of sight. 
Even with us human beings, who have lost this sense 
to a great extent, there is nothing like a scent to 
suddenly and vividly recall forgotten memories. 
A sound or sight will appear familiar ; but the mind 
will generally have to grope after what it recalls, 
whilst with a scent the memory is an instantaneous 
flash. P.erhaps this, then, is the reason why the 
duller-witted beast responds so much more quickly 
and is so much more affected by the sudden noxious 



A Box of Perfume 75 

smell of a human being than he is by sight.' Now 
this proves — if it proves no more — that the strange 
lav^ that operates in man operates no less powerfully 
among his poorer relations in the field and the forest. 
And it goes farther. It alleges that the nose is in 
much more direct communication with the brain 
than is the eye. And it is at this point that Mr. 
Buckland comes to our aid, and deals with the same 
point in greater detail. *In the head of a deer,' he 
writes, *we find three sentinels, which are given to 
the animal to warn it of danger from its enemies; 
these sentinels are the nose, the eye, and the ear.' 
He then proceeds to describe the formation and 
mechanism of each of these organs, and finishes up 
by comparing them. *I place,' he says, 'the organs 
of sense in the deer's head in the following order of 
development and use to their owner: i. The nose. 
2. The ear. 3. The eye. These facts may be use- 
ful to deer-stalkers, who, if desirous to approach 
a suspicious deer, should run the chance of the deer 
seeing them rather than the chance of his hearing 
them; and, above all, they should avoid all possi- 
bility of the deer getting notice of their presence by 
the organ of smell/ 

Now all this is very interesting so far as it goes; 
but, obviously, it does not go far enough. And it is 
just at the point at which I feel the insufficiency of 
all these teachers that a still more skilful master 
comes to my aid. Does the New Testament say 
nothing about the odours of life? In Dr. Moffatt's 



76 The Uttermost Star 

fine translation I find Paul speaking of the knowl- 
edge of Christ as *a sweet perfume.' It is a pregnant 
and suggestive phrase. You would not compare 
other knowledge to a perfume. But the knowledge 
of Christ is different. It is intangible, indefinable, 
inexplicable, inexpressible. You can no more 
describe it than you can describe the odour of violets. 
For that matter, you can never describe the best 
things in life. To a man who has no sense of smell, 
how would you describe the perfume of roses or 
boronia or lavender? To a man with no spiritual 
vision, how would you describe a conversion? A 
conversion is simply the response of the soul to the 
'sweet perfume of Christ,' just as my recollection of 
my old school was the response of my memory to the 
perfume of the harrow leaf. I know that, moving 
along some subtle avenue between my nose and my 
brain, the odour of that leaf quickened into vigorous 
life the slumbering faculties of my memory, al- 
though I can no more explain how it was done than 
I can fly. A man need feel, therefore, no sense of 
shame when he has to confess his inability to explain 
the potent spell of that lovelier, loftier fragrance. 

A Persian fable says : One day 
A wanderer found a lump of clay 
So redolent of sweet perfume, 
Its odour scented all the room. 

'Who art thou?* was his quick demand. 
'Art thou some gem from Samarcand, 
Or spikenard in this rude disguise, 
Or other costly merchandise?' 



A Box of Perfume 77 

'Nay ! I am but a lump of clay.' 

'Then whence this wondrous sweetness — say?' 

'Friend, if the secret I disclose, 

I have been dwelling with the Rose.' 

'Wherever I go,' says Paul, *I scatter the perfume 
of His knowledge everywhere. I live for God as the 
fragrance of Christ breathed alike on those who are 
being saved and on those who are perishing.' I 
began by saying that this lovely old world of ours is 
a box of sweetest perfumes. I close by showing 
that the richest and choicest aroma of them all is 
diffused, not by scented shrubs or fragrant flowers, 
but by noble, beautiful, gracious lives. 



VIII 

SLIPPERS 

Slippers^ John Broadbanks was telling me, came 
pretty freely to the manse during the three years 
that preceded his marriage. When the ladies of 
Silverstream wished to show their lonely young 
minister some mark of their appreciation or affection 
or compassion, it usually took the form of slippers. 
It is only another instance of that spiritual insight 
that is one of the principal ingredients in feminine 
sagacity. They felt, perhaps, in that subconscious 
or semi-conscious way peculiar to the gentle sex, 
that there is a subtle but inevitable relationship 
between the use a man makes of his ministry and 
the use that he makes of his slippers. I will not go 
so far as to say that the grace in a man's soul may 
be measured by the rapidity with which he wears out 
a pair of slippers; but if anybody else cares to make 
that daring assertion, I shall not go out of my way 
to challenge it. Whatever a young wife may forget 
let her never forget to have the good man's slippers 
on the fender awaiting his return. If only she can 
cultivate in him the love of slippers, he will develop 
into a husband of the finest stamp. The man who 
is always buying new boots, yet whose slippers last 

78 



Slippers 79 

indefinitely, must be regarded with suspicion and 
distrust. His soul is not quite healthy. Slippery 
people are an abomination; but slippered people 
are invariably lovable folk. 

A man who wears out plenty of slippers must have 
an exquisitely tranquil soul. Slippers are such 
restful things! They look restful; they feel restful; 
they radiate rest fulness among all beholders. I do 
not know what was in the apostle's mind when he 
spoke of the feet being shod with the preparation of 
the gospel of peace; but I know that there is nothing 
that a man can wear on his feet so expressive of 
peace as a pair of comfortable slippers. Such a man 
appears to be on the best of terms with all men in 
general and with himself in particular; he is the 
personification of composure, benevolence, and 
goodwill. A man would only wear slippers in a 
place that he loves ; he would only wear them in the 
company of people who are dear to him; he would 
only read under such conditions a book in which his 
soul delights. In the Correspondence of Sir Arthur 
Helps there appears a letter written to Sir Arthur 
by Lord Morley. The famous author has sent the 
great statesman one of his books, and Lord Morley 
is acknowledging the gift. 'This very night,' he 
says, T shall put on my slippers and dip joyfully 
into it, and go to bed full of mellow wisdom and 
goodwill, which is better than anything else. I 
hold slippers to be a compliment to an author, 
because who in this easeful fashion would read 



8o The Uttermost Star 

disagreeable letters or bad books?' Who, indeed? 
Why, I verily believe that all the best books were 
written in slippers. It may be fancy, but when I 
draw my chair up to the fire and put on my slippers 
and take up some friendly volume that soon fills me 
with a glow of contentment and delight, I think I 
can see the pattern of the author's slippers. They 
are never very bright or showy or new ; but they are 
cosy and faded and loose, and just enough the worse 
for wear to suggest the constancy of fond familiarity 
and old friendship. 

Give me the man who can look — and feel — per- 
fectly at home in such a pair of slippers! The 
Autocrat of the Breakfast-table divided men into 
two classes. There are, he said, men of the cat class 
and there are men of the squirrel class. A squirrel 
is, for awhile, an engaging companion. It is full of 
life, overflowing with exuberance and vitality; it 
is nimble, brisk, and sprightly, leaping over every- 
thing and climbing everywhere ; it is full of surprises, 
and astonishes you every second by its agility and 
its curious antics. But it soon tires you, and you 
are glad to see it restored to its revolving cage. 
Similarly, there are people with nimble and restless 
minds. They are lively, jerky, and smart. Their 
thoughts do not run in the natural order of sequence. 
*They say bright things on all possible subjects, but 
their zigzags rack you to death. After a jolting 
half -hour with one of these jerky companions, 
talking with a dull friend affords great relief. It 



Slippers 8i 

is like taking the cat in your lap after holding the 
squirrel!' Just look at the cat lying purring 
pleasantly on the hearthrug! What could be more 
restful ? And look at the squirrel, already whirling 
its revolving cage ! What could be more restless ? 
Cats and squirrels! To pass from the squirrel- 
people to the cat-people is, the Autocrat declares, 
like putting a soft ground-glass shade over a lamp 
whose naked glare has tortured our tired eyes be- 
yond endurance. 

Now, oddly enough, whilst Dr. Oliver Wendell 
Holmes was writing The Autocrat on one side of the 
Atlantic, Walter Bagehot was penning his famous 
essays on the other. And, in one of the cleverest of 
those delightful papers, Bagehot establishes a con- 
trast between stupid people and brilliant people. 
And, surprising as it may seem, he expresses a 
decided preference for the former, and argues with 
resistless force that the world owes incalculably 
more to people who are stupid than to people who 
are smart. 

But we are getting a long way from home. We 
set out to talk, not about squirrels, nor about stupid- 
ity, but about slippers. Yet we are not so far astray 
as a casual observer might suppose. For who are the 
Autocrat's cat-people but the people who can feel 
perfectly at home in slippers? And who are his 
squirrel-people but the people who always wear 
boots? And one has only to read Bagehot's essay 
a second time in order to see that the contrast at the 



82 The Uttermost Star 

back of his mind is really the contrast between the 
people who dearly love a pair of slippers, and the 
people, who, wearing out cartloads of boots and 
shoes, yet make a pair of slippers last them half a 
lifetime. 

I referred just now to Silverstream. I think I 
have already said that I was often a guest at John 
Broadbanks' manse. It was a pleasant drive from 
Mosgiel, and we saw a good deal of each other in 
those days. But I remember well a question that 
one or other of the children invariably asked at 
tea-time. 

*Is this a "slipper" evening?' somebody would cry. 

John's wife saw that I was puzzled when I heard 
the question for the first time, so she hastened to my 
enlightenment. 

They call it a "slipper" evening,' she explained, 
*when John has not to go out. If he has a meeting, 
they call it a "boot" evening !" 

I soon discovered which they liked best. 

'Oh, it's a "boot" evening to-night, Don!' he 
would say, as he rose from the table and went off to 
prepare for the pending engagement ; and every face 
instantly clouded. But when he announced that it 
was a 'slipper' evening there were smiles and pranc- 
ings and clapping of hands. For a 'slipper' evening 
meant the telling of tales to the little ones and the 
reading aloud to Myrtle and Jack and mother after 
the babies were in bed. 

I remember one afternoon strolling across the 



Slippers 83 

fields behind the manse with John. It was in the 
early autumn. We sat down in a gap in the gorse 
hedge and watched the rabbits popping in and out 
among the tussocks. 

That's a great idea of your youngsters/ I said, 
'that distinction between ''boot" evening and 
"sHpper" evening !' 

'Yes,' he repHed, with a laugh, 'and it would 
astonish you to know the number of books that we 
get through. Sometimes, even on "boot" nights, 
I manage to read to them for ten minutes or so be- 
fore saddling Brownie; on "slipper" nights I read 
for half an hour, or, if the story is exciting, perhaps 
a little more. We began with Pilgrim's Progress. 
Then we took Robinson Crusoe, The Swiss Family 
Robinson, Uncle Tom's Cabin, Captain Cook's 
Voyages, Mungo Park's Travels, and a few other 
books of the same kind. During the last year or 
two we have stuck pretty closely to fiction. It has 
been great fun, renewing my own acquaintance with 
Dickens and Scott in the company of the youngsters, 
and enjoying their excitement on hearing these great 
stories for the first time/ 

He went on to speak of the peals of laughter and 
glitter of tears that greeted some of the well-known 
passages in these familiar books. 

'Upon my word!' he broke out again, 'it's about 
the most economical way of being jolly that has ever 
been invented. About this time last year I had to 
go into town one day to attend a committee-meeting, 



84 The Uttermost Star 

and, looking in at the "Chaucer's Head" Book- 
room, I picked up a very decent copy of Pickwick 
Papers for a shilHng. I brought it home, and, as 
soon as Myrtle saw the pictures, she made me prom- 
ise to read it. Night after night, as soon as the tea- 
things were washed up and put away, we all drew 
our chairs to the fire, and I read one or two, or some- 
times three, chapters of Mr. Pickwick's adventures. 
How we laughed and cried together! We quite 
pitied the people who, whilst we read, were rushing 
hither and thither in search of amusement. Here 
were six of us spending thirty or more evenings 
crowded with profit and amusement in return for the 
modest outlay of one single shilling!' And John 
laughed again, so loudly this time that a pair of 
rabbits that had been playing unsuspectingly a hun- 
dred yards away, dashed instantly to cover. 

^Before so very long,' he added reflectively, and 
with a note of sadness in his voice, 'before so very 
long the old nest will have to be broken up and all 
my fledglings will have flown; but I really believe 
that, long after they have forgotten everything else, 
they will remember the "slipper" nights that we 
spent by the fire together !' 

And so do I. And this only confirms me in my 
conviction that the world's best work is done in 
slippers. When a man takes off his boots and puts 
on his slippers, he gives you the impression that his 
work, for the time being, at any rate, is over. But 
that is only the trickery of appearances. As a 



Slippers 85 

matter of fact, when a man takes off his boots and 
puts on his sHppers, his best work is just beginning. 
John Broadbanks has done a magnificent work at 
Silverstream, but I doubt if he has done anything 
finer than the work that he did on his ^slipper' eve- 
nings by his own fireside. 

History is often made in sHppers. Take the case 
of Sir Joseph Banks. The work that he did in 
shppers is one of the most extraordinary and un- 
paralleled achievements in the story of the Empire. 
Joseph Banks accompanied Captain Cook as natural- 
ist on those wonderful and epoch-making voyages 
that changed the face of the world. But the work 
even of the greatest navigators must, in the nature 
of things, be tantalizingly superficial. Cook skirted 
the coasts of immense continents, but had no time 
to explore them. Banks stood on the deck of the 
Endeavour and saw the shores of those vast but 
unknown lands pass, like a panorama, along the 
horizon, and he vowed that he would dedicate his 
energies to the work of inspiring young men with a 
passion for exploration. And most amazingly did 
he succeed in his self-imposed task. In the days of 
his retirement, living in his quiet English home, he 
coaxed young men to his fireside, and, sitting there 
in his slippers, he told them of the vision of unknown 
continents that haunted him sleeping and waking. 
Many of them went back to their homes and offices, 
smiling superciliously at the old man's enthusiasm. 
But on the minds of three of his listeners his story 



86 The Uttermost Star 

had the desired effect. He contrived to fire the 
fancy, one after the other, of three young men, who, 
as a result of those fireside conversations, wrote their 
names in letters indelible upon the world's broad 
scroll of fame. These three men were Mungo 
Park, Lachlan Macquarie, and John Franklin. 
Mungo Park became, under Sir Joseph's influence, 
the pioneer of African exploration. He began the 
work that was afterwards completed by Burton, 
Speke, Livingstone, Stanley, and an army of daunt- 
less and devoted pathfinders. Lachlan Macquarie, 
also under Sir Joseph's influence, opened the gates 
of Australia, and converted a microscopic and 
insignificant settlement into a huge continental 
dominion. 'I would beg of you,' said Sir Joseph 
Banks to Colonel Macquarie, on the eve of his sail- 
ing for Australia, 'I would beg of you to go out with 
a strong resolve to open up the country and to dis- 
cover and develop its resources.' Macquarie came, 
and, setting himself to the task that Sir Joseph had 
committed to his trust, the Blue Mountains were 
soon crossed and the incalculable possibilities of the 
continent revealed. It was Sir Joseph Banks, too, 
who inspired Franklin with the idea of opening up 
the silent seas of the Far North. In 1818 he, being 
then seventy-five years of age, pleaded with the 
young naval officer to devote his life to the discovery 
of the North- West Passage. The nation being now 
at peace, he pleaded, some of the most daring and 
gallant young officers — men who had fought with 



Slippers 87 

Nelson at Copenhagen and Trafalgar — might now 
be commissioned to search for the long-dreamed-of 
waterway. The nation lent an ear to the old man's 
plea; young Franklin caught the contagion of the 
veteran's zeal, and, as a result, and after thirty 
years' of tireless search, the North- West Passage 
was discovered and sealed by the tragic and pathetic 
sacrifice of its discoverers. Whenever I catch the 
thrill of African exploration; whenever I feel a glow 
of admiration as I contemplate the dauntless courage 
of our Australian pathfinders; whenever I read 
afresh that stirring record of suffering and adven- 
ture in the icy polar seas, I let my mind go one step 
farther back and I conjure up the image of a stately 
old gentleman, sitting with slippered feet by a com- 
fortable English fireside. More often than we some- 
times think, history is made in slippers. 

Thirty or forty years ago the friends of Dr. 
Alexander Preston issued, as a memorial volume, 
and for private circulation, a number of autobio- 
graphical notes found in the good man's desk after 
his death. In the second chapter, perhaps the most 
fascinating in the book. Dr. Preston tells how he 
found his way to faith and to the ministry. 'I owe 
my soul,' he says, 'to no preacher or teacher. I 
was born in the tiny village of Cudford Brook, and 
down a little lane that ran from the village green to 
the brook itself there stood a pretty old cottage. 
In the summer-time the porch was a tangle of roses. 
The door, even in winter, always stood open; and 



88 The Uttermost Star 

nobody who knew Old Duncan, as we called him, 
ever thought of knocking. We walked right in, and 
he was always pleased. He sat by his fire, a little 
old gentleman in slippers ; and, even as a small boy, 
I revelled in his company. He was interested in all 
my games and my lessons, and he always knew what 
I ought to do. If I was puzzled or disappointed, I 
always went and told Old Duncan. He seemed to 
understand boys. And he used at times to speak to 
me about the kingdom of heaven. And, some- 
how, he made it wonderfully attractive. He always 
took it for granted that I should love his Saviour, 
and his Bible, and his church, and all the things that 
were so dear to him. "When you are a minister of 
the Word, Sandy," he would say; and he made me 
feel that that was part of the divine programme; 
and, surely enough, it has all come to pass exactly 
as he said!' And, later on, Preston refers again to 
Old Duncan: *The red carpet slippers,' he says, 
'seemed a part of him. And when he died nobody 
had the heart to burn them ; so they put them where 
they had almost always been, and in his slippers he 
was buried!' 

*A little old gentleman in slippers!' We are all 
moving towards the sovereignty of the slippers. 
Life itself is a march towards slippers. Happy they 
who have caught the restful spirit of the slippers, 
to whom the slippers represent not an imprisonment, 
but — as in the case of Joseph Banks and Old Duncan 
— the opportunity for a radiant sunset ministry. 



IX 

THE MISER OF MURDSTONE CREEK 

For nearly an hour we had seen no sign of human 
habitation. We were motoring along one of our 
great Australian highroads, and the dense bush ran 
riot everywhere. All at once we saw, right ahead 
of us, a little old man, with long, shaggy beard, 
leaning heavily on a stick. He had evidently 
emerged from the bush on our right, and was 
leisurely crossing the road. He moved slowly and 
painfully until he reached the centre of the highway. 
At that moment he heard, for the first time, the 
throbbing of the car. He paused, glanced furtively 
towards us, and then, startled and terrified, he 
shambled on as quickly as he could go, diving into 
the thick scrub on our left. When we reached the 
spot we pulled up, but could see no sign of him. A 
couple of miles farther on we came upon the little 
township of Murdstone, nestling among the foothills 
of the Western Tiers. In ordering some refresh- 
ment we reported what we had seen. 

*0h, that was nothing,' replied the good woman, 
as she went on laying the cloth for our entertain- 

89 



go The Uttermost Star 

ment. 'That was Old Father Grab, as the boys call 
him, the Miser of Murdstone Creek. He lives in a 
hollow tree down the gully, near the stream. He 
hates to be seen by anybody. It is a wonder that he 
allowed you to catch sight of him. You must have 
come quickly round the bend after he had got out 
into the open.' 

An hour later we had left Murdstone and its miser 
a long way behind us, and the matter slipped from 
our remembrance. But, somehow, it has rushed 
back upon my mind this evening. 

The miser is a model for us all. I know, of 
course, that it is considered correct to vilify and 
malign him. But that is nothing to go by. The 
crowd often crucifies those whom it should crown, 
and crowns those whom it should crucify. These 
things go by fashion. Near a large public school I 
saw the other day a group of boys, just released 
from their tasks. One of them espied a sparrow sit- 
ting on a paling-fence fifty yards away. Instantly 
he stooped, seized a stone, and threw it at the bird. 
A second boy followed suit. Then another and an- 
other, until, before the bird took wing, almost the 
entire group was engaged in throwing stones at the 
sparrow. In the same way somebody once threw a 
stone at the miser. Somebody else followed, and so 
on, until now it is considered quite the correct thing 
to say the bitterest things that can possibly be said 
about this unhappy man. 

*I have seen a good deal of misers/ says the Poet 



The Miser of Murdstone Creek 91 

at the Breakfast-table, *and I think I understand 
them as well as most people do.' Indeed, he became 
an amateur miser himself. He tells us in another 
place that he once kept a little gold by him in order 
to ascertain the exact amount of pleasure to be got 
out of handling it. And, as a result, his eyes were 
opened, and he said hard things about the miser no 
more. *I understand now,' he says, 'the delight that 
an old ragged wretch, starving himself in a crazy 
hovel, takes in stuffing guineas into old stockings 
and filling earthen pots with sovereigns, and every 
now and then visiting his hoards and fingering the 
fat pieces, and thinking over all that they represent 
of earthly and angelic and diabolic energy. A miser 
pouring out his guineas into his palm, and bathing 
his shrivelled and trembling hands in the yellow 
heaps before him, is not the prosaic being we are in 
the habit of thinking him. He is a dreamer, almost 
a poet. Think of the significance of the symbols he 
is handling!' Symbols! Symbols of what? 

'Symbols of Power, to be sure!' answers Sir 
Walter Scott ; for, in The Fair Maid of Perth, Sir 
Walter has given us a miser. His name is Henbane 
Dwining, the apothecary. Hear him in his own 
defence! 'Henbane Dwining,' he says, as he gazes 
in delight upon the hoards which he has secretly 
amassed, and which he visits whenever the fancy 
takes him, 'Henbane Dwining is no silly miser, 
doting on pieces for their golden lustre; it is the 
power with which they endow the possessor which 



92 The uttermost Star 

makes him thus adore them.' And he chuckles over 
the reflection that the smile of beauty, the dagger 
of revenge, the intoxication of pleasure, the con- 
trol of fields of fair flowers and forests of rich 
game, the favour of courts, the honours of kings, 
the pardon of popes, are all, through their virtue, 
at his beck and call ! 

*Yes, symbols, and symbols of Power!' says the 
Poet. *The contents of that old glove will buy him 
the willing service of many an adroit sinner, and 
with what that coarse sack contains he can purchase 
the prayers of holy men for all succeeding time. In 
this chest is a castle in Spain, a real one, and not 
only in Spain, but anywhere he will choose to have 
it. All these things, and a thousand more, the miser 
hears and sees and feels and hugs and enjoys as he 
paddles with his lean hands among the sliding, 
shining, ringing, innocent-looking bits of yellow 
metal, toying with them as the lion-tamer handles 
the great carnivorous monster, whose might and 
whose terrors are child's play to the latent forces 
and power of harm-doing of the glittering counters 
played with in the great game between angels and 
devils.' I must apologize for having detained the 
Poet so long, but I am most anxious to set the miser 
in a pleasant light before the eyes of my reader; and 
nothing is more likely to brush away any old preju- 
dices that that reader may cherish than the eloquent 
testimony I have just quoted. 

The miser is guided by a true instinct. It is right 



The Miser of Murdstone Creek 93 

to hoard. The only mistake that the miser makes, 
and it is a mere matter of detail, is that he hoards 
the wrong things. He hoards gold, and gold is not 
to be despised. But there are things better worth 
hoarding even than gold ; and the miser who is really 
an adept at the game will quickly find them out. I 
have just been reading the biography of Miss Annie 
J. Clough, the famous Principal of Newnham Col- 
lege, and one of the pioneers of our modern educa- 
tional system. It is a beautiful and noble life. But I 
was impressed by the insistence with which Miss 
Clough urged upon the young ladies under her 
charge the importance of storing the mind in youth 
with beautiful memories. The average person can, 
she insisted, furnish himself with experiences that, 
costing neither time nor money, will nevertheless 
yield infinite satisfaction when seen in the retrospect 
of the years. Miss Clough reminds me of Henry 
Ryecroft. Lovers of George Gissing will remem- 
ber that when Ryecroft realized, in the days of age 
and infirmity, the exquisite pleasure afforded him by 
the recollection of youthful strolls in the fir copse, in 
the primrosed woods, in the poppy-sprinkled corn- 
fields, and in the meadows full of buttercups, he was 
filled with remorse at the reflection that he had spent 
so much of his time amidst conditions that provided 
him with no such pleasing retrospect. I remember 
once chatting with a man who had lost his sight in a 
colliery explosion. He was telling me that, every 
day of his life, there rushes back to mind some little 



94 The Uttermost Star 

thing that caught his eye in the old days. The 
squirrel that he saw in the beech-trees; the daisy- 
chain that his sister made as they sat together in 
the summer fields; the column of spray that dashed 
skywards when the waves broke against the cliffs; 
the swallow that he watched as it skimmed the 
surface of the millpond and returned with a cap- 
tured fly to the nest under the eaves; the bare 
branches in the forest bowed down with their heavy 
freight of snow; the glow of sunset; the grey of 
dawn; the glimmer of twiHght; the merry twinkle of 
a boy's eye; the soft crimson of a girl's blush — he 
could never express his gratitude that his mind was 
stored with thousands of such images. 

I have no stones to throw at the miser. I am 
sorry for him. The boys at Murdstone called him 
'Old Father Grab,' whilst my hostess at the refresh- 
ment-rooms called him the 'Miser of Murdstone 
Creek.' And, on the whole, her name for him is 
more pathetic than their nickname. In his great 
chapter 'On the Morality in Words' Archbishop 
Trench instances the word 'miser' as a distinguished 
example of a word having in its very composition 
an attestation of eternal truth. The words 'miser' 
and 'misery' come, the Archbishop shows, from 
the same root. 'Is it strange, then,' he asks, 'that 
men should have agreed to call him a miser, or 
miserable, who eagerly scrapes together and pain- 
fully hoards the mammon of this world? By calling 
such a man a "miser" the moral instinct lying deep 



The Miser of Murdstone Creek 95 

in all hearts has borne testimony to the tormenting 
nature of this vice; to the gnawing pains with which 
even in his present time it punishes its votaries; 
to the enmity which exists between it and all joy. 
The man who enslaves himself to his money is 
proclaimed in our very language to be a ''miser" 
or miserable man.' Here, therefore, we have one 
of those rare cases in which the name is truer and 
more expressive than the nickname. 

'Old Father Grab!' cried the boys of the town- 
ship ; and there was derision and resentment in their 
cry. 

'The Miser of Murdstone Creek!' said our hostess 
at the tea-rooms; and in her more exact description 
there was an undertone of tears. 

George Eliot, in introducing us to Silas Marner, 
the miser of Raveloe, discusses with us, in her 
pleasant way, the miser's singular passion. She 
thinks that it arises from our human love of com- 
pleting sets of things. Let her state her theory in her 
own way. 'Have not men, shut up in solitary 
confinement, found an interest in marking the 
moments by straight strokes of a certain length on 
the wall, until the growth of the sum of straight 
strokes, arranged in triangles, has become a master- 
ing purpose? Do we not wile away moments of 
inanity or fatigued waiting by repeating some 
trivial movement or sound, until the repetition has 
bred a want, which is incipient habit? That will 
help us to understand how the love of accumulating 



96 The Uttermost Star 

money grows into an absorbing passion. Marner 
wanted the heaps of ten to grow into a square; 
and then into a larger square; and every added 
guinea, while it was itself a satisfaction, bred a new 
desire.' We like to complete a score; and then a 
hundred; and then a thousand; and then a million. 
Every cricketer knows what I mean. How he loves 
to complete a century ! To be bowled at ninety-nine 
is an exasperating experience. The difference 
between ninety-eight and ninety-nine is a difference 
of one; but the difference between ninety-nine and a 
hundred is enormous ! 

I am sorry for the miser, too, because his hoard 
does not increase automatically, as it would do if he 
entrusted it to a banker. It does not, like old wine, 
improve with age. It is at this point that the 
memory has the advantage of the miser. When 
the miser goes to the old stocking in which he stored 
five hundred sovereigns, he finds five hundred 
sovereigns there : they are sovereigns still, and there 
are just five hundred of them. But when, after a 
period of time, you go to the memory, you find what 
was once a very little thing; but to what a great 
thing has it grown! The buttercups in the fields 
of childhood have become part of life's most pre- 
cious hoard. Or look at this ! 

*Good-bye, Steer forth,' said David Copperfield, 
as he looked into the face of his friend for the last 
time, *good-bye!' 

*He was unwilling to let me go,' says David, *and 



The Miser of Murdstone Creek 97 

stood, holding me, with a hand on each of my 
shoulders/ 

'Good-bye!' he said at last, 'and, Davie, if any- 
thing should ever separate us, you must think of 
me at my best, old boy. Come! Let us make that 
bargain. Think of me at my best, if circumstances 
should ever part us.' 

They parted; and Davie never saw Steerforth 
again till he saw his face upturned in death, tossed 
ashore by the waves after the storm and the ship- 
wreck. 

'Think of me at my besf; it is one of the deepest 
of our human cravings. And it is the charm of that 
secret hoard that memory treasures that it answers 
to that passionate yearning. For our memories are 
the most charitable and kindly things about us. 
The memory is rarely guilty of harsh judgment or 
of slander; she speaks well of almost everything 
and everybody. She accentuates the pleasurable- 
ness of pleasure, making many things much more 
attractive in retrospect than they seemed in reality. 
She robs pain of much that is revolting. Like the 
ivy that creeps over the crumbling ruin and imparts 
a beauty to deformity, the trying and exasperating 
things of life are made to appear romantic or 
humorous as we tell the story years afterwards. 
'Nothing,' says a great American, 'can be so perfect 
while we possess it as it will seem when remembered. 
The friend we love best may sometimes weary us by 
his presence, or vex us by his infirmities. How 



98 The Uttermost Star 

sweet to think of him as he will be to us after we 
have outlived him ten or a dozen years!' Memory 
thus contrives to see the most mundane and unallur- 
ing objects through a kind of golden haze. The 
miser's pence never by any chance turn into 
pounds; but in the memory all our geese become 
swans. 

But most of all am I sorry for the miser because 
he is always oppressed by the limitations of his 
wealth. He always has one pile that is incomplete ; 
and it vexes him. It makes him miserable — a 
miser! I could not help thinking of the Miser of 
Murdstone Creek yesterday when I was preparing to 
preiach on the 'unsearchable riches/ I was struck 
by the various translations. Dr. Weymouth speaks 
of the 'exhaustless wealth' of Christ; Dr. Moffatt 
renders it 'fathomless wealth' ; whilst Dr. Jowett 
tells a story. *Once/ he says, *I heard Dr. Rendel 
Harris read the chapter in which these words are 
found, and he read from his pocket Greek Testa- 
ment, and gave his own translation. And I remem- 
ber how, when he came to this passage, he threw 
out his arms in a wide gesture as he repeated the 
words "the unexplorahle wealth of Christ." We had 
a suggestion of a vast continent, not yet tracked out, 
with roads only here and there.' Now here is a col- 
lection ! 

'Unsearchable riches!' say the Authorized and 
Revised Versions, with a thought of the height and 
mystery of this invisible treasure. 



The Miser of Murdstone Creek 99 

'Exhaustless wealth!' says Dr. Weymouth, with 
a hint at its everlasting duration. 

'Fathomless wealth!' says Dr. Moffatt, with a 
suggestion of immeasurable profundities and un- 
plumbed depths. 

'Unexplorahle wealth!' says Dr. Rendel Harris, 
as he thinks of its continental breadths and un- 
charted immensities. 

Let us hope that some home missionary or bush 
evangelist will look in at the hollow tree down the 
gully and make the old miser's eyes to sparkle as he 
unfolds such astonishing and unsuspected treasure! 



X 

THE SECRET 

A SECRET is a maddening affair. It goads and 
stings without discrimination and without pity. 
It tortures, Hke a grand inquisitor, both the man who 
possesses and the man who covets it. The one is 
bursting to tell his secret; the other is burning to 
know it. The one is like a bottle filled with highly 
effervescent fluid tightly corked; the other is like a 
bottle empty and ashamed. But look at this. 
They were off to school, side by side, Jessie and 
Joan. 

*Do tell me !' pleaded Jessie. 

*But I promised I would tell nobody,' explained 
Joan. 

And so, all through the long school-morning, 
two little lassies, usually bright as sunshine, bent 
over their tasks with faces clouded and glum. The 
secret was a kill- joy. It had spoiled all the fun for 
both of them. 

The worst of it is that secrets are such noisy 
things. If a man carries a sovereign in his pocket, 
he keeps it dark. Nobody knows it. He does not 

lOO 



The Secret loi 

proclaim it from the housetops for ^he information 
of every thieves' kitchen. But with a secret it is 
otherwise. A secret is more coveted than a sover- 
eign. Yet, by an odd perversity, the man who 
carries a secret lets all the world know that he car- 
ries it. You can see it in his eyes ; you can detect it 
in his behaviour ; you may even hear it from his lips. 
He does not, of course, tell you the secret itself; but 
he exasperates you by confiding to you the fact that 
he holds a secret. That is why it is so much more 
easy to pick a man's brains of secrets than to pick 
his pockets of sovereigns. 

Take Cabinet Ministers, for example. I have 
been reading Dasent's great Life of Delane. When 
Delane edited The Times, there were no such things 
as Cabinet secrets. Delane wouldn't allow them! 
The Czar of Russia read the British ultimatum in 
The Times before he received the document from 
the British ambassador! No decision of any 
importance was reached by Her Majesty's advisers 
but The Times published it before the responsible 
Minister had had time to announce it ! Every new 
appointment appeared first in the paper, and was 
afterwards communicated to Parliament ! Premiers 
stormed ; Ministers thundered ; members made angry 
speeches; officials complained bitterly; but still the 
conditions knew no change. Lord Derby, in the 
Upper House, almost demanded the head of the 
offender. Where was the leakage? Who supplied 
the information? 'A cask,* remarked Lord Malmes- 



I02 The Uttermost Star 

bury, *may leak just as easily at the top as at the 
bottom,' and conscience-stricken Ministers looked 
at each other in amazement or guiltily hung their 
heads. The journalists knew all the moves in the 
game. The clubs had a story of one noble lord 
whose face always assumed a look of extraordinary 
importance when a Cabinet secret was tucked away 
among the cerebral convolutions of his brain. A 
certain reporter, who made it his business to scrutin- 
ize his lordship's countenance closely, knew that 
look well. He pounced upon his prey like a fox 
on a goose. 

*Well, my lord,' he would say, quite casually, 
*so you have settled such-and-such a matter at last !' 

His lordship would look astonished, and con- 
cluded that the official announcement must have been 
made, or else that some other member of the Cabinet 
had been less discreet than himself. 

*Yes,' he would reply, *and, since you know so 
much, there can be no harm in telling you the rest !' 

And so it came about that at daylight the paper 
appeared with the whole story ! 

Now and then it may' happen that a Cabinet 
Minister is relieved of a sovereign that he was carry- 
ing in his pocket. But that is only now and again, 
because sovereigns are so silent. Cabinet Ministers 
do not advertise the fact that they carry sovereigns 
in their pockets. But every day Cabinet Ministers 
are relieved of the secrets that they carry in their 
minds. For, unlike the sovereigns, secrets are so 



The Secret 103 

noisy. The man who carries a secret proclaims to 
all the world that he carries that secret. And, as a 
natural result, the secret is very soon a secret no 
longer. 

A secret, as I have said, is a maddening affair. It 
teases and tantalizes and taunts me. Be I young 
or old, male or female, I am aflame with curiosity 
and busy with inquisitive investigations until I know 
all about it, and then, in all probability, I laugh at 
myself for having bothered my head about such a 
stupid or trivial matter. But, meanwhile, the time 
has come to pull ourselves up and ask ourselves a 
particularly plain and pertinent question. Is a 
secret a good thing or a bad thing? Is it a good 
thing or a bad thing that, as soon as Jessie discovers 
that Joan has a secret, poor little Jessie can think 
of nothing else until she has solved the captivating 
mystery? Is it a good thing or a bad thing that, 
as soon as Fleet Street gets wind of a secret in 
Downing Street, an army of journalists, keen as 
hounds on the scent, give Cabinet Ministers no rest 
night or day until they have run their quarry to 
earth? Is it a good thing or a bad thing that, as 
soon as I find that my neighbour holds a secret, I 
am wretched and ill at ease until I too am in pos- 
session of it? It is a good thing; unquestionably 
a good thing. I am prepared to argue that the 
secrets of the world have been the salvation of the 
world. 

What is the eternal quest for knowledge but the 



104 T^® Uttermost Star 

response of our tantalized minds to the taunting 
secrets of the universe? 

Twinkle, twinkle, little star! 
How I wonder what you are 1 
Up above the world so high, 
Like a diamond in the sky. 

There was the question — a question asked, in that 
form or in some other, by the first inhabitants of 
this planet. And the longer that question remained 
unanswered, the more restless men became. The 
stars; the secrets of the stars; what were the secrets 
of the stars? And out of that insatiable hunger 
for a secret, astrology and astronomy were born. 
Had a secret possessed no power to inflame the 
curiosity of men, we should never have had a 
Copernicus, a Galileo, a Kepler, a Newton, a Her- 
schel. Because the silence of the skies was more 
than man could bear, he set to work to wrest their 
story from them. The Tower of Babel was the 
germ from which the Greenwich Observatory 
evolved. And so man came at length to know the 
sun and moon, Jupiter and Saturn, as well as Lon- 
don knows Melbourne or Melbourne Hong Kong. 
The same is true of the strata beneath our feet. The 
silence of the past was a terrible thing. What had 
happened on this planet before we arrived here — 
before our history books began? Here was a secret 
for you! And that secret teased the imagination 
of man, until he set to work to dig up the records. 



The Secret 105 

With what frenzy of eager enthusiasm he searched 
for that secret! No prospector hunting after gold 
at Klondyke or CalgoorHe ever tore up the earth 
with fiercer zest. His pickaxe shook the planet. 

Beneath the seas he made a stair; 
He laid the primal forges bare; 

He asked if Truth were hid 

'Neath cairn or pyramid; 

He questioned rune and kann, 

And bones as old as man. 

And thus, in that passionate quest of a secret, the 
science of geology was born ! And what means all 
this romantic tale of exploration — these bronzed 
travellers back from the interior of great continents, 
these battered ships back from the Poles? It is 
the same old story. There were secrets! How 
the secret as to the fountains of the Nile taunted the 
brain of Livingstone! In the delirium of death he 
was still babbling of the fountains, the unseen 
fountains. How the secret of the West tantalized 
the fancy of Columbus! How the secrets of the 
snows have lured to their triumphs a great host of 
Arctic and Antarctic adventurers! If science is a 
good thing, it follows that a secret is a good thing; 
for if the world had been challenged by no secrets, 
it would certainly have been enriched by no science. 
No man's equipment is complete unless he is 
furnished with a fair stock of secrets. The man who 
can air all his knowledge to everybody knows 



io6 The Uttermost Stax 

nothing worth imparting to anybody. A man's 
wealth must be measured, not by what he pays away, 
but what he still possesses after all his obligations 
are discharged. A water-supply must be measured, 
not by the flow at the tap, but by the depth and 
fullness of the reservoir. And, similarly, a man's 
knowledge must be gauged, not by his conversation, 
but by his reserves. A wise man knows more than 
he ever tells. He may share much of his knowledge 
with the multitude; he may divide some of his best 
things among his intimates and companions; he 
may keep a few of his priceless treasures for the wife 
of his bosom; but, even then, he will reserve a few 
choice morsels for himself and for himself alone. 
Like a gardener who feels that he must himself taste 
some of the choicest fruit he grows, like a miser who 
runs his fingers through his hoard in secret, the wise 
man has a few things that are strictly and solely for 
his own delectation. 

There is something very impressive about a 
dignified reticence. The Scotsman of the true type 
never carries his heart on his sleeve. The English 
gentleman of the old school is very conservative in 
the selection of his friends. It is a bad sign when a 
man becomes prodigal of his secrets. When he feels 
that he must take everybody into his confidence, 
and tell everybody everything, he should instantly 
send for a doctor. He is getting morbid. A man 
is never so poor as when his stock of secrets has run 
low. For the matter of that, it is a bad sign when 



The Secret 107 

a nation becomes garrulous and talks about every- 
thing. There are some subjects that are too sacred 
to be exposed to the glare of the footlights. They 
do not fit the flicker of a film. They are too majestic 
to be bandied to and fro in the course of a newspaper 
controversy. Humanity has a few secrets; and, 
when humanity is quite healthy and sane, it does not 
drag those secrets on to the stage or discuss them in 
the press. There is something wrong somewhere 
when a people is prepared to talk about everything. 
Religion in itself is essentially a matter of secrets. 
Emerson, writing of his visit to England, said that 
no man could understand England or English his- 
tory unless he were in the secret. And the secret of 
England, he maintained, was England's faith. 
'That divine secret,' he goes on to say, 'has existed 
in England from the days of Alfred the Great to 
those of Florence Nightingale.' A divine secret, 
mark you! That is the mistake that they make 
who seek to penetrate the superb silences of revela- 
tion. Of the life beyond the grave, for instance, the 
Scriptures speak with sublime and awful reticence. 
As against this, we have the grotesque history of 
seances and table-rappings. 'These records,' says 
Mr. Augustine Birrell, until recently one of His 
Majesty's advisers, 'these records leave me uncon- 
vinced. They lack grandeur. They deal with petty 
things. A revelation of a life beyond the grave 
ought surely to be more stupendous than that — 
something of really first-class importance. Other- 



io8 The Uttermost Star 

wise we are just as well without it.' Precisely! 
Even God is entitled to His secrets. There are 
things about which inspiration can afford to be 
silent. The fact before which Pompey stood 
bewildered when he burst into the Holy of Holies 
was the awful stillness of the place. No priest 
spake; no choir chanted; the Temple was invaded, 
but it held its secrets still. A stately reticence is 
infinitely nobler than an ignominious speech. 

The soul itself is essentially a secret thing. It 
does not advertise itself as the body does. It 
loathes the limelight. It dreads publicity. It shrinks 
from the glare. The deepest things can never be 
told. *He told me all things that ever I did,' said 
the woman of Samaria to her fellow townsmen. 
That is a masterpiece of Revelation and of Reti- 
cence. She did not say what those things were. 
She did not glory in her own shame. She revealed 
all that it was needful to reveal; she concealed all 
that it was womanly to conceal. The man who can 
reveal to his fellows the whole of his religious expe- 
rience has no experience worth revealing. Faith, to 
quote Newman's fine phrase, has large reserves. 
The Old Testament likens the growth of the soul to 
the growth of a tree. Oliver Wendell Holmes used 
to say that a tree is a most wonderful creature stand- 
ing on its head. The principal part is underground. 
Those marvellous fibres that scent their food and 
water from afar, and that accomplish the most 
astounding engineering feats in order to reach it, are 



The Secret 109 

all stowed away in the darkness. What the tree dis- 
plays is as nothing to what the tree hides. The New 
Testament likens the relationship existing between 
the soul and its Saviour to the relationship existing 
between a bride and her bridegroom. A proud 
young wife may draw aside the veil in order to per- 
mit her bosom friends to peep for a moment at her 
felicity; but what she reveals is as nothing to what 
she conceals. Like the tree, the soul draws her sus- 
tenance from darkest depths and hidden springs; 
she lives on her secrets. Like the bride, the soul de- 
rives her satisfaction from a holy and beautiful rela- 
tionship, the mystic character of which no tongue 
can ever tell. 



XI 

MARY GOLDING 

I CANNOT think of Mary Golding without feeling 
heartily ashamed of myself. Captain Stuart and 
Major Mitchell, when they were blazing our great 
Australian trails, crossed the districts that were 
afterwards riddled with diggings, and never so much 
as noticed the gold strewn everywhere about them! 
The wheels of their bullock-drays crushed through 
the quartz; yet the thought of the precious metal 
never once occurred to them. We all go through 
life in pretty much the same way. For some years 
I must have bustled past the buxom, good-humoured 
figure of old Mary Golding twice every day without 
dreaming that I was so near to the fringe of a great 
romance. It is part of the pathos of this pathetic 
old world that we are not introduced to many of the 
people best worth knowing until after they have 
dropped into their graves. Mary Golding has just 
dropped into hers. For sixty years she sold news- 
papers every day at the corner of Northumberland 
Avenue and Whitehall. Indeed, Mary took over 
the pitch from her mother; so that, mother and 
daughter, the pair of them had been selling papers on 

no 



Mary Golding iii 

that selfsame spot for the biggest part of a century. 
Very few of those whose business now takes them to 
Charing Cross will be able to recall the elder lady; 
but millions of us must have brushed past Mary 
Golding without even noticing her. In all weathers, 
we are told, Mary Golding was at her post. Last 
December, as she was turning her face towards home 
after selling her last paper, she was knocked vio- 
lently down by a passing taxi, but she limped back to 
her place next morning. The severe winter has, 
however, proved too much for her, and the place that 
has known her for sixty years will know her no 
more. The London papers, with whose circulation 
the old lady was so closely identified, noticed her 
death, and even expressed regret ; but there is some- 
thing about such a career that appeals to the im- 
agination. As a mark of respect, and in token of my 
sorrow at having passed her so often without even 
raising my hat to her, I propose to indulge in a little 
speculation. 

Like the cloud of sparrows that rises into the air 
as you approach a ripening cornfield, a whole host 
of questions is started by the thought of Mary 
Golding. And to think that I might have asked 
those questions and received from her own lips the 
answers! But I will ask them still, and the silence 
that follows shall be my just rebuke and fitting 
retribution. For one would like to know more about 
the old newsvender, and especially about the way 
in which she regarded her work. There is room for 



112 The Uttermost Star 

a good deal of psychological conjecture. Did she 
look upon it as a mere matter of rote — everlastingly 
dealing out papers in return for pennies and half- 
pennies? It is conceivable that she may have felt 
herself to be almost as mechanical as the penny-in- 
the-slot machines. The boys, flying hither and 
thither, experience the thrill of rivalry, almost the 
excitement of the chase, as they watch with eager 
eyes for possible customers, and dart in and out 
amidst the traffic in their haste to effect a sale. 
But Mary Golding had but to stand still, and she 
may have felt that the perpetual handing out of 
papers in return for coppers converted her into the 
merest piece of mechanism to which humanity can be 
reduced. As she stood there day after day she saw 
men and women come dancing past her with bright 
eyes and flushed faces. She could see that their lives 
were all novelty and excitement. But she saw 
also hundreds of creatures who came every day at 
exactly the same time, who approached every day 
at exactly the same pace, who wore every day 
exactly the same expression, and who were going 
every day to exactly the same tasks. 

There was a boy who was on his way to a factory 
to stick endless piles of labels on endless rows of 
pots. There was a girl who was hurrying to a 
restaurant to stand all day behind a curtain washing 
up a pile of dirty dishes. There, on the poor girl's 
left, stood the greasy plates; and there, on her 
right, stood those that she had cleaned. But the 



Mary Golding 113 

pile on her left never grew any smaller, and the pile 
on her right never grew any taller, because the hands 
of the waitresses, like the phantom hands of fate, 
darted in and out of the curtains, everlastingly add- 
ing to the one pile and everlastingly subtracting 
from the other. From morning till night she washed 
and washed and washed; but the pile of dirty plates 
was like the widow's cruse, it never wasted away. 
Then there was a woman wnth a hunted look in her 
eye, who passed Mary Golding every morning at 
precisely eleven minutes past eight. She was on her 
way to sew buttons of one unvarying kind on gar- 
ments of one unvarying pattern. And then there 
was Clark. I feel sure that Clark passed Mary 
Golding on his way to the office in Fleet Street. 
Mark Rutherford has made us all familiar with 
Clark. He was an address-copier. 'The monotony 
of that perpetual address-copying was terrible. He 
has told me with a kind of shame what an effect 
it had upon him, that sometimes for days he would 
feed upon the prospect of the most childish trifle 
because it would break in some slight degree the 
uniformity of his toil. For example, he would 
sometimes change from quill to steel pens and back 
again, and he found himself actually looking for- 
ward with a kind of joy — merely because of the 
variation — to the day on which he had fixed to go 
back to the quill after using steel.' These people 
Mary saw go past her every day like creatures on a 
treadmill. And, as she thought of herself, standing 



114 7^3 Uttermost Star 

at the same spot, doling out everlasting papers in 
return for everlasting pennies, it may be that she felt 
that she was the most mechanical puppet of them 
all. 

It may be. But then again, it is at least equally 
possible that she caught something of the romance 
of the thing. There is a piquant pleasure that only 
the gossip knows. The joy of having something to 
tell that everybody else is dying to hear is one of 
the wildest delights of which some natures are 
capable. Did Mary Golding feel, as she handed out 
her papers, that that rapture was her perpetual 
bliss? She was only a child when, in 1857, she took 
her mother's place. The year 1857 was a very 
notable one. It was the year of the Indian Mutiny. 
London was hungry for the latest news. The girl 
may be pardoned if she took a peculiar and personal 
pleasure in spreading the thrilling items as soon as 
they were available. One of the first papers that 
she sold told of the Relief of Lucknow. 

Dance to the pibroch! — saved! We are saved! is it you? 

Is it you? 
Saved by the valour of Havelock, saved by the blessing of 

Heaven ! 
'Hold it for fifteen days I' We have held it for eighty-seven ! 
And ever aloft on the palace roof the banner of England blew ! 

Then, again, 1857 was David Livingstone's great 
year in England. Did the romance of the African 
wilds enter into the soul of Mary Golding that year? 
A girl would be unusually apathetic and stolid who 



Mary Golding 115 

found no delight in handing out papers that told 
such tidings to the eager and anxious men as they 
passed to and fro. And if, in those early days of her 
business, she imbibed such a temper, it is possible 
that all the drama of subsequent history wove itself 
into her spirit, and she felt herself to be part and 
parcel of every stirring movement of which her 
papers told. The more I think about it, the more 
do I wish that I had noticed and spoken to her in 
my old London days. Through her soul the pageant 
of empires may have swept. Kings, councils, and 
continents may have been the commonplaces of 
her thought. Mary Golding may have converted 
her newspaper pitch at the street-corner into an 
observatory from which she every hour surveyed the 
universe. 

And, talking of that long stand of hers at the 
street-corner, it would be interesting to know 
whether, in the course of those sixty years, Mary 
ever sighed for a change of scene. Did she not 
sometimes fancy that she would like to exchange 
pitches with some newsvender at Kensington or 
Regent Street? But here, again, there are two 
strangely divergent possibilities. It is conceivable, 
on the one hand, that, as the years went by, she 
grew sick of the thought of Northumberland House, 
and only trudged back to the old spot, in sunshine 
or in snow, in summer and in winter, under the 
remorseless pressure of a cruel necessity. Could 
anything be more wearisomely monotonous than to 



ii6 The Uttermost Star 

spend one's whole day, from dawn to dark, year in 
and year out, without hohday or reHef, at the same 
spot for sixty long years? And yet, on the other 
hand, it is at least equally possible that, with the 
years, she fell in love with the place, and felt that 
she could not live without it. We grow to things, 
like the ivy to the wall. Richard Jefferies was once 
asked why he walked the same road every day. 
The question startled him, and he could not imme- 
diately answer it. It had never occurred to him 
that he had adhered so closely to the same path. 
*Not till years afterwards,' he says, Vas I able to 
see why I went the same round and why I did not 
care for change. I do not want change; I want the 
same old and loved things. I want the same wild 
flowers, the same trees, the same soft ash-green! 
I want the same turtle-doves, the same blackbirds, 
the same coloured yellowhammer, singing, so long as 
there is light enough to cast a shadow on the dial, 
the same old song! And I want them all in the 
same places! Let me see the idle shadows resting 
on the white dust; let me hear the humble-bees, 
and stay to look down on the dandelion disc; let 
me see the chaffinch with a feather in her bill! 
No change for me ! Let me see the same things on 
the same road, keeping the same succession year by 
year !' 

I recognize, in quoting Richard Jefferies, that 
there is a vast difference between a Sussex lane and 
a London street-corner. But it is just as possible 



Mary Golding 117 

to lose one's heart to a city pavement as to a country 
pasture. We get fond of things, not because of 
their intrinsic beauty, but because of our very 
famiharity with them. They become part of us, 
and we of them. What about Tim Linkinwater? 
'It's forty-four year,' said poor Tim, when it was 
proposed to give him some reHef from his regular 
duties, 'it's forty-four year next May since I first 
kept the books of Cherryble Brothers. I've opened 
the safe every morning all that time as the clock 
struck nine, and gone over the house every night at 
half -past ten to see the doors fastened and the fires 
out. I've never slept out of the back attic one 
single night. There's the same mignonette box in 
the middle of the window, and the same four flower- 
pots, two on each side, that I brought with me when 
I first came. There ain't — I've said it again and 
again, and I'll maintain it — there ain't such a square 
as this in the world; not one. For business or 
pleasure, in summer-time or winter — I don't care 
which — there's nothing like it. There's not such a 
spring in England as the pump under the archway. 
There's not such a view in England as the view out 
of my window; I've seen it every morning before I 
shaved, and I ought to know something about it. 
I have slept in that room for forty-four year, and if 
it wasn't inconvenient and didn't interfere with 
business, I should request leave to die there!' 
Dickens knew, when he drew Tim Linkinwater, that 
he was painting from life. I like to fancy that 



ii8 The Uttermost Star 

Mary Golding entertained the same agreeable senti- 
ments concerning the street-corner at which so much 
of her Hfe was passed. 

Moreover, Mary Golding had one immense advan- 
tage over Tim Linkinwater, inasmuch as the per- 
sonal element entered more largely into her life. A 
street-corner is alive with personal interest. There 
are the people who come past every day, and who 
come past at exactly the same time. There are the 
people who come frequently, but whose coming is 
irregular and erratic. And there are the strangers. 
Mary Golding would probably only welcome the 
members of this latter class as imparting a tinge of 
variety and novelty to her ordinary outlook. Her 
delight would be in the regular comers. A man 
would pass her four times a day for twenty years 
without exchanging a word, yet if, on any one occa- 
sion, he were ten minutes late, the circumstance 
would awaken her interest; and, if he absented him- 
self altogether, she would await the next day with 
impatience and concern. She may have fancied, and 
with some justice, that this silent interest was re- 
ciprocal. In her time she regularly sold her papers 
to Lord Salisbury, to Lord Hartington, to Mr. John 
Burns, and to Mr. Gladstone. If ever a heavy cold 
or a twinge of rheumatism suggested the advisabil- 
ity of a day at home, it is quite on the cards that the 
good woman flattered herself that, were she to yield 
to such a temptation, Mr. Gladstone would be 
wondering what had become of her. Life has an 



Mary Golding 119 

amiable habit of flattering us in this particular, and 
of wedding us to our work. However modest our 
duties may be, we get into the way, after a number 
of years, of fancying that things could not go on 
without us. Mary Golding may quite easily have 
schooled herself into believing that Northumberland 
House would have to close its doors unless she stood 
just outside the gate with her papers. No item 
of news upon her placards, she would fancy, could 
be quite so astounding and sensational as her own 
disappearance from the familiar spot. 

It is by whispering such things into our ears that 
life binds us to our allotted tasks, and renders at- 
tractive to us duties that, to an outsider, might seem 
repugnant and intolerable. Sour-visaged philos- 
ophers may tell us if they will that no man is indis- 
pensable; but, as a matter of actual fact, we all meet 
life every morning with a smile and a song because 
in our hearts we believe that the world could not 
get on without us. Something whispers it to us, 
and, in spite of the philosophers, we all believe it; 
and, because we all believe it, the work of the world 
gets done. 



PART II 



DRIFTING APART 

We were sitting on the cliffs at Beechington, read- 
ing. At least, we were coquetting with our books, 
for one's attention is always divided, under such con- 
ditions, between the volume on his knee and the 
broad expanse of blue water that stretches out 
before him. In the distance we could see the heads. 
All at once a fine steamer crept out from between the 
great rugged promontories, and put out to sea. To 
our surprise, it was followed almost immediately by 
another. It may have been owing to the light and 
atmospheric conditions, but, from where we sat, the 
two ships looked as much alike as two peas in a pod. 
Indeed, one could almost imagine that he was gazing 
upon a mirage, and that the one was really but a 
reflection of the other. One behind the other, the 
two vessels crept along the skyline as though the 
one had the other in tow. Then came the change. 
One swerved slightly to port, and the other slightly 
to starboard. We turned once more to our books. 
And when we looked up again, the alteration was 
almost incredible. The one ship, having come 
nearer, looked immensely larger; the other was a 

123 



124 Tho uttermost Stax 

mere speck on the horizon. The one was still in 
the sunshine; the other was shaded by a passing 
cloud. The two appeared to have nothing in com- 
mon. It seemed impossible that, half an hour ago, 
they had been so near together and looked so much 
alike. Here, surely, was an allegory. I was gazing 
at a picture of the things that drift apart. 



I thought of Abraham and Lot. Abraham and 
Lot journeyed together all the way from the Persian 
Gulf to Palestine; from Palestine to the Pyramids; 
and were on their way to Palestine again. Then 
they drifted apart. 'There was strife between the 
herdmen of Abraham's cattle and the herdmen of 
Lot's cattle. And Abraham, said unto Lot, Let there 
be no strife, I pray thee, between me and thee, and 
between my herdmen and thy herdmen; for we are 
brethren. Is not the whole land before thee? Sep- 
arate thyself, I pray thee, from me. If thou wilt 
take the left hand, I will go to the right; and if thou 
wilt take the right hand, I will go to the left. And 
Lot chose him all the Plain of Jordan; and Lot jour- 
neyed east: and they separated themselves the one 
from the other.' Anybody who afterwards saw 
Abraham with his tent pitched, and his altar built, on 
the plains of Mamre, and Lot with his tent pitched 
towards Sodom, and with no altar at all, would 
never have dreamed that, once upon a time, they 



Drifting Apart 125 

journeyed so closely together and seemed so much 
alike. I thought of this story, I say, as I watched 
the two ships from the cliffs at Beechington. 



II 

There is an essential difference between two and a 
pair, A sovereign and a sixpenny-bit are two, the 
fox and the goose are two, the hare and the tortoise 
are two ; you cannot arrange these in pairs. Chris- 
tian and Pliable are two; they go side by side, but 
all eternity lies between them. Christian and 
Faithful, on the other hand, are a pair; they may 
be torn from each other's embrace, but all eternity 
cannot really separate them. John and Judas are 
two; David and Jonathan are a pair. Proximity 
is no indication of affinity. More than a century 
ago two men voyaged together round the coast of 
Scotland. Anybody looking at them from the 
shore would have supposed that they were a pair. 
They were nothing of the kind; they were two. 
One was Robert Stevenson, Engineer to the Board 
of Northern Lighthouses; the other was Sir Walter 
Scott. But, although they share the same boat, 
they have scarcely anything in common. Scott 
loves the fair weather; Stevenson the foul. Scott 
likes to get ashore, wander up over the hills, inspect 
some crumbling old ruin, get among the gossips of 
the countryside and gather up those quaint old 
legends and stirring traditions that he will after- 



126 The Uttermost Star 

wards weave into his great romances. Stevenson, on 
the other hand, is thinking, not of the past, but of 
the future. His eye is not on castles that have been, 
but on Hghthouses yet to be. He loves to see the 
ocean in a fury, so that he may detect the points of 
real peril. He spends his time in taking soundings, 
climbing about on the precipitous rocks and jagged 
reefs, and getting drenched to the skin in the boiling 
surf. He is only concerned with the discovery of 
suitable sites for his lighthouses. They are not a 
pair; they are two. A pair is a single entity; its 
constituents are indivisible. But two are two; 
two separate entities, thrown together only to drift 
apart again. If they are a pair, all the oceans of the 
world may roll between them; they are united still. 
But if, as in the case of Abraham and Lot, Christian 
and Pliable, Judas and John, Stevenson and Scott, 
they are two, there is no union. It is mere prox- 
imity. You may bind men together by the most 
awful deeds and instruments that the law can devise; 
you may commit them to each other by the most 
solemn oaths and covenants ; you may bring to bear 
upon them the most sacred rites and ceremonies; 
but it is all futile. They are not mated. Proximity 
is not affinity. They are still two; they are not a 
pair. 

Ill 

No one who has once experienced the torture of 
physical separation— rthe separation effected by 



Drifting Apart 127 

mere distance — would say a word to belittle its 
inexpressible anguish. You have only to stand 
upon the platform when the boat-train leaves, or 
to take your place upon the wharf when the great 
ship is swinging out to sea, in order to witness one of 
the most poignant and passionate manifestations of 
human sorrow. And those who, so far from being 
onlookers, have actually experienced that terrible 
ordeal, know that it is the concentration of heart- 
break and the climax of mortal agony. As the 
fluttering handkerchiefs become small as snowflakes 
and then vanish altogether; as the fond familiar 
faces become less and less distinguishable until at 
last they are lost in the crowd; as the horrid chasm 
slowly widens between the vessel and the quay, the 
soul feels itself to have been caught in the pitiless 
grip of heartless forces that are crushing the very 
life-blood out of it. At the moment it is even more 
painful than death. Death comes so gently and so 
naturally, and, for a moment or two, the dead still 
seem so near, that it takes a while to realize that the 
fond ties have been finally and irrevocably snapped. 
But this other wrench is so unnatural and so violent. 
The bitterness of death does not reach its culmina- 
tion in the act and article of death. But this grief 
reaches its climax all in a moment; and during that 
moment, the soul writhes in torture indescribable. 
And yet, knowing this and having experienced it, 
I say deliberately that, of all forms of separation, 
this form is in reality the least intolerable. 



128 The Uttermost Star 

IV 

At this point Alfred Tennyson becomes our best 
and wisest teacher. 'In Memoriam' is the classic 
of two great souls whose history resembled the 
history of my two steamers. For a while they 
journeyed together and were twin. Then their 
ways suddenly diverged. Hallam was called to the 
higher service. Tennyson found himself continuing 
on the old course. And, contemplating the separa- 
tion, the poet lets his fancy play about the various 
kinds of separation by which one soul may be torn 
from another. There is, for example, the social 
cleavage. Here are two ploughboys working 
together on the farm. They labour side by side, and 
are as much alike as my two steamers. But one is 
content to be a ploughboy; the other is fired by a 
great ambition. Tennyson describes this second 
youth as one 

Who breaks his birth's invidious bar, 
And grasps the skirts of happy chance, 
And breasts the blows of circumstance, 

And grapples with his evil star; 

Who makes by force his merit known, 
And lives to clutch the golden keys. 
To mould a mighty state's decrees, 

And shape the whisper of the throne; 

And moving up from higher to higher 
Becomes, on Fortune's crowning slope, 
The pillar of a people's hope. 

The centre of a world's desire. 



Drifting Apart 129 

But what about the other ploughboy, that *earHest 
mate' with whom he trudged side by side along the 
rutted country lanes in the days of auld lang syne? 
He 

. . . ploughs with pain his native lea 
And reaps the labour of his hands, 
Or in the furrow musing stands ; 

'Does my old friend remember me?' 

Tennyson gazes upon this picture that his fancy has 
conjured up — the picture of the ploughman and the 
Prime Minister; and he compares the separation 
thus effected with the separation that has snatched 
his old friend Hallam from his side. Is Hallam like 
the Prime Minister, moving now along some more 
exalted plane? And is he himself like the plough- 
man, leaning on the handles of his plough, and 
wondering if sometimes his old friend thinks fondly 
of him still? Here, then, is the social cleavage. 
It is trying enough ; but it is not the worst. 

V 

For, almost instantly, another picture flashes upon 
the white screen of the poet's fancy. A bride and 
bridegroom ! 

These two — they dwelt with eye on eye! 
Their hearts of old have beat in tune, 
Their meetings made December June, 

Their every parting was to die ! 

Then he devotes himself to study; he must needs 



I30 The Uttermost Star 

excel. He sits apart, lost in his researches. He 
seems to slight her simple heart. 

He thrids the labyrinth of the mind, 
He reads the secret of the star. 
He seems so near and yet so far. 

He looks so cold ; she thinks him kind. 

She keeps the gift of years before, 

A withered violet is her bliss; 

She knows not what his greatness is. 
For that, for all, she loves him more. 

For him she plays, to him she sings 
Of early faith and plighted vows; 
She knows but matters of the house. 

And he, he knows a thousand things. 

Her faith is fixt and cannot move, 
She darkly feels him great and wise, 
She dwells on him with faithful eyes, 

*I cannot understand : I love.' 

And again Tennyson thinks of his old friend. Is 
Hallam like the studious bridegroom? Has he lost 
himself in diviner contemplations and gradually- 
grown away from the sweet old simplicities of long 
ago? And is he himself like the lonely wife, gazing 
on her learned husband, clinging still but failing to 
understand ? 

VI 

The social cleavage is bad, and the intellectual 
cleavage is worse, but there is something still more 
terrible. What about Abraham and Lot ? What 



Drifting Apart 131 

about Judas and John? Is not the climax of 
tragedy reached when two friends walk familiarly 
together, seek every day each other's society, and, 
perhaps, go up to the house of God in company. 

And then; and then ! One, like Abraham, 

becomes every day a little finer, a little nobler, a 
little more considerate, a little more courteous, a 
little more unselfish ; whilst the other becomes every 
day a little more self-centred, a little less chivalrous, 
a little less thoughtful, a little more coarse, a little 
more materialistic, a little more sensual, until, at 
last, like my two steamers, nobody would ever 
suspect that they once journeyed so familiarly 
together and seemed so much alike. 

Here, then, you have these five forms of human 
separation; these five ways in which our human 
partnerships may to all outward appearances be 
dissolved; these five methods of drifting apart. 

1. There is the cleavage effected by Distance — 
the parting on the railway platform; the farewell at 
the wharf. 

2. There is the cleavage effected by Death — 
Arthur Hallam and Alfred Tennyson. 

3. There is the Social cleavage — the ploughboy 
who becomes Prime Minister, and the ploughboy 
who remains at his lonely furrow. 

4. There is the Intellectual cleavage — the simple 
housewife and her studious husband. 

5. There is the Moral cleavage — Abraham and 
Lot; John and Judas. 



132 The Uttermost Star 

These five; and although I have said that, of 
them all, the parting on the pier is the most bitter at 
the moment, yet those who are called to return with 
swollen eyes to their saddened homes may there fall 
upon their knees and give humble and hearty thanks 
to heaven that to them has been meted out this form 
of separation — this and no other. 

VII 

Poor old Uncle Tom had been done almost to 
death by Simon Legree, the vicious slave-dealer. 
He lay in the shed, dying, his back all torn and 
lacerated by the cruel lashes. All through the night 
there stole stealthily to his side the other slaves on 
the plantation, poor creatures who crept in to see 
the last of him, to bathe his wounds, to ask his 
pardon, or to kneel in prayer beside his tortured 
frame. With the morning light came George 
Shelby, his old master, to redeem him. 

*Is it possible, is it possible ?' he exclaimed, kneel- 
ing down by the old slave. 'Uncle Tom, my poor, 
poor old friend !' 

But Uncle Tom was too far gone. He only mur- 
mured faintly to himself: 

'Jesus can make a dying bed 
Feel soft as downy pillows are.* 

*You shan't die; you mustn't die, nor think of 
it! I've come to buy you and take you home!' 
cried George, with impetuous vehemence. 



Drifting Apart 133 

*Oh, Mas'r George, ye're too late. The Lord's 
bought me and is going to take me home — and I long 
to go. Heaven is better than old Kentuck !' 

At this moment the sudden flush of strength 
which the joy of meeting his young master had 
infused into the dying man gave way. A sudden 
sinking fell upon him; he closed his eyes; and that 
mysterious and sublime change passed over his face 
that told the approach of other worlds. He began 
to draw his breath with long, deep inspirations; 
and his broad chest rose and fell heavily. The 
expression of his face was that of a conqueror. 

'Who,' he whispered, 'who — who — who shall 
separate us from the love of Christ f and fell asleep. 

All the five forms of cleavage that I have tabu- 
lated had done their worst for Uncle Tom. He had 
been torn away from the old Kentucky home; 
snatched from the arms of old Aunt Chloe; sold 
away from children and kindred : separated from 
everything that he counted precious. And yet, and 
yet there was One heart from which nothing could 
separate him, One love from which he could never, 
never drift. 



II 

THE WILL-O'-THE-WISP 



Oh, the Will-o'-the-Wisp ! the Will-o'-the-Wisp I 
What tales we have heard of the Will-o'-the-Wisp! 
Hovering over the reedy mere; dancing across the 
misty marshes; fluttering round the dank lagoon; 
flickering over the spongy moorlands; who has not 
met with the Will-o'-the-Wisp? Child of the bog 
and the swamp and the fen, haunting on foggy 
autumn nights the soft morass and the slimy quag- 
mire, he is known by a score of expressive and 
sinister aliases; but we are not confused by the 
multitude of his ugly names. Whether the country 
people call him Old Spunkee, or speak with terror 
of Jack-o'-Lantern, we recognize under each such 
fearsome title or description the familiar features 
of Will-o'-the-Wisp. How the flesh creeps as we 
read, in the quaint pages of Ben Jonson and Robert 
Burton, of John Fletcher and Francis Beaumont, 
their hair-raising stories of Will-o'-the-Wisp! In 
the first book I ever read I made the acquaintance of 
Will-o'-the-Wisp. It was Mary Godolphin's Sand- 
ford and Merton — a special edition prepared in 
words of one syllable. I have it still, and a record on 

134 



The Will-o'-the-Wisp 135 

the fly-leaf shows that I read it first when I was in 
my sixth year. But I remember the tense excite- 
ment with which I followed the adventures of Hal 
Sandford on that night in which he was lost on the 
lonely moor. In front of him he saw a dim and 
fitful light which he took to be a lantern carried by 
some more fortunate traveller. The light zigzags 
to and fro; and Hal concludes that his fellow 
traveller is drunk. But, drunk or sober, he longs to 
reach him and enjoy some kind of human compan- 
ionship. He presses on until he finds himself becom- 
ing entangled in the marshes, and at last falls head- 
long into a slimy pit. 

'But, Hal,' says Tom Merton, as he listens to the 
story afterwards, 'did you find out what that light 
was that you saw in the marsh ?' 

'Yes,' said Hal; 'it was the Will-o'-the-Wisp!' 

Thus, as old John Gay sings, 

Will-o'-the-Wisp misleads nightfaring clowns 
O'er hills and sinking bogs. 

It may be with Will-o'-the-Wisp, as with most of 
us, that he is not so black as he is painted. It is pos- 
sible that his elfish tricks have been exaggerated by 
those who have placed his antics and vagaries on 
record. Perhaps he is not so fond of damp old 
churchyards and places of execution as some of the 
novelists would have us to believe. But he is a mis- 
chievous little sprite for all that. Just listen to his 
song: 



136 The Uttermost Star 

When night's dark mantle covers all, 

I come in fire arrayed, 
Many a victim I've seen fall, 

Or fly from me dismayed. 

Many a traveller I deceive, 
And with their parting breath 

I hear them call in vain for help, 
And dance round them in death. 

*Will-o'-the-Wisp I' they trembling cry ; 

'Will-o'-the-Wisp 1 'tis he!' 
To mark their fright as off they fly 

Is merry sport to me I 

I dance I I dance 1 I'm here 1 I'm there ! 
Who tries to catch me catches but air 1 
The mortal who follows me follows in vain, 

For I laugh, ha, ha! 

I laugh, ho, ho ! 
I laugh at their folly and pain, 

I laugh at their folly and pain 1 



II 

I do not propose, in these fugitive paragraphs of 
mine, to attempt to reduce the subject to the terms 
of precise definition and exact treatment. Others 
have ventured upon that task, and, according to his 
wont, Will-o'-the-Wisp has invariably eluded them. 
Friedrich List, the German philosopher, came upon 
Will-o'-the-Wisp one night on the edge of a swamp, 
and held his hand in the luminous glow, yet felt no 
warmth. Knorr also came upon the sprite, and 
persuaded him to stand so still near the fringe of a 



The Will-o'-the-Wisp 137 

marsh that he was able for a quarter of an hour to 
touch him by extending his walking-stick as far as 
he could reach over the water's edge. Yet when, 
at the end of that time, the light suddenly flitted 
away, and Knorr felt the ferrule that had been so 
long in the flame, it was as cold as though no fire 
had ever touched it. A weird, uncanny little elf 
is this Will-o'-the-Wisp of ours! 

Ill 

But Will-o'-the-Wisp does not stand alone. As 
I have wandered about the solar system, poking my 
stick into every ant-heap and rabbit-hole that I 
have come across, I have hit upon quite a number of 
things just as elusive and just as strange. There 
are lights that appear when they are most needed; 
lights that seem to be specially designed for the 
guidance of those who see them; and yet lights that 
will lure to his destruction the benighted creature 
who dares to follow them. Take Instinct, for 
example. Sometimes, as though to beget in us a 
fatal confidence in its infallibihty, it leads with the 
most amazing accuracy along a hideously perilous 
and intricate path. See with what skill it guides 
the mason-bee! This odd little creature builds her 
miniature palace out of the mud. When the tiny 
chambers are dry and ready for occupation, she 
hunts for spiders. Having caught a spider, she 
bites him in such a way as not to kill, but to paralyse 



138 The Uttermost Star 

him. Then laying her eggs upon his back, she 
deposits him in one of the cells which she has con- 
structed; and so on until all the cells are full. She 
thus secures for her offspring, in the paralysed 
spiders, a plentiful supply of fresh food with which 
to nourish their earliest infancy. Here the quality 
that we commonly call Instinct seems to have al- 
most reached perfection, and it would be interesting 
to be able to trace the age-long history of adventure, 
experiment, and disappointment by which so elabor- 
ate a system has been built up and perfected. 
Surely the kindly light that leads the mason-bee so 
shrewdly can be safely trusted by everything and 
everybody ! 

And yet, and yet! Travellers on the Amazon 
have frequently commented upon the fate that over- 
takes vast numbers of boa-constrictors when the 
river is swollen with its winter floods. Instinct 
teaches these huge reptiles, in the autumn, to take 
a full meal and coil themselves up for their long 
sleep. But, strangely enough. Instinct does not 
teach them where to hibernate. As a consequence, 
great numbers of them coil themselves up below 
high-water-mark, with the result that, when the 
rains come and the river rises, they are swept away 
by the swirling waters. Instinct tells them what to 
do and when to do it ; but it does not tell them where 
to do it, and for the want of this essential item of 
information they miserably perish. Or pass from 
the insects and the reptiles to the animals. Let us 



The Will-o'-the-Wisp 139 

take the case of the lemmings. *Every now and 
then/ says a traveller who has seen this strange phe- 
nomenon in Norway, 'every now and then, all the 
lemmings in a district congregate in a great army, 
as if some Fiery Cross summons has been sent 
round, and move in a bee-line for the sea. Over 
mountains, through forests, across foaming torrents 
they make their impetuous way. Many are lost, 
many drop, many starve; but on and on the army 
marches for the sea. And when they reach the sea, 
all plunge in and are drowned! What perverted in- 
stinct can account for this?' In this case it would 
almost seem as if Instinct had not merely forgotten, 
as in the case of the boa-constrictor, to tell the crea- 
tures something that they need to know, but had 
deliberately set herself to lure them to their doom. 
Is not this a Will-o'-the-Wisp? 

One of the novelists to whom I have referred tells 
of a peculiarly grim adventure. His hero, hopelessly 
lost in a lonely and unfamiliar district, sees all at 
once two lights. One, a long way off, appears to 
be passing through a clump of trees. Its bearer 
is apparently on the fringe of a forest. The traveller 
shrinks from the thought of entering the gloomy 
woods at dead of night, and turns wistfully towards 
the other gleam. It is nearer; it advances slowly, 
though with irregular and jaunty movements, across 
the level country. He decides to follow it, and is 
soon up to his waist in the swamp. As it turned out, 
the distant light was the lantern of the men who 



I40 The Uttermost Star 

were searching for him; he had been ensnared by 
the glow of the Will-o'-the Wisp ! Now something 
very Hke this is happening every day. There are 
well-known cases of conflicting instincts, or of an 
instinct that speaks simultaneously with two con- 
tradictory voices. Darwin, in his Descent of Man, 
gives several instances of this peculiarity. The 
most curious, in his judgment, is the occasional 
conquest of the maternal instinct by the migratory 
instinct. The maternal instinct is one of the most 
powerful emotions known to naturalists. It will 
lead the most feeble, the most timid, and the most 
shrinking creatures to face the greatest dangers in 
direct opposition to the law of self-preservation. 
But the migratory instinct is also amazingly strong. 
*A confined bird will at the proper season beat her 
breast against the wires of her cage until it is bare 
and bloody. The migratory instinct causes young 
salmon to leap out of fresh water, in which they 
could continue to exist, and thus unintentionally to 
commit suicide.' And it sometimes happens that 
these two instincts, the maternal and the migratory, 
appeal to the same bird at the same time. Thus, late 
in the autumn, swallows, house-martins, and swifts 
frequently desert the tender young in their nests. 
Darwin thought that, when the bird is near her 
nestlings, the maternal instinct is probably the 
stronger; but when, out of sight of the nest, she 
comes upon thousands of other swallows congregat- 
ing for their overseas flight, the migratory instinct 



The Will-o' -the- Wisp 141 

assumes the ascendant. 'When arrived at the end 
of her long journey, and the migratory instinct has 
ceased to act, what an agony of remorse the bird 
must feel, if, from being endowed with great mental 
activity, she cannot prevent the image constantly 
passing before her mind of her young ones perishing 
through cold and hunger on a bleak and distant 
shore!' Is not this the very experience that the 
novelist describes? 

IV 

Is Reason much better — or even Conscience? 
Reason is a most marvellous faculty. And yet, 
in the straits of the soul, it is a most erratic guide. 
Two statesmen, equally able and equally con- 
scientious, survey the same facts; reach diametri- 
cally opposite conclusions; and become the leaders 
of hostile parties. Two scientists, equally discerning 
and equally experienced, examine the same phe- 
nomena, and build up theories utterly antagonistic 
the one to the other. Two judges, equally learned 
and equally just, hear the same w^itnesses tell the 
same stories; they convince the one judge that 
truth is with the prosecutor, whilst the other is no 
less certain that it is with the defendant. If I trust 
so treacherous a guide too implicitly, may I not find 
myself floundering in the bog? 

Conscience, too, is wonderful, almost divine. 
And yet, as has often been pointed out, 'when the 
Lacedaemonians whipped boys to death as an 



142 The Uttermost Star 

offering to Diana; when the mother of Xerxes, as 
he departed on one of his expeditions, buried aHve 
a number of youths to propitiate the subterranean 
powers; when the Carthaginians placed their little 
children on the red-hot lap of Moloch,' they were 
following Conscience and making terrible sacrifices 
for her dear sake. The men who burned the 
martyrs were often as conscientious as the martyrs 
whom they burned. When, on the first of July, 
141 6, John Huss was bound to the stake, a poor old 
peasant woman came to the place of execution 
bringing with her a faggot. She begged that it 
might be added to the pile round the stake. But 
when it was flung on, she was not content. It 
must, she said, be close up to the victim, so that it 
might help to consume him. 

*Have I ever harmed you or yours/ asked Huss, 
*that you are so bitter against me ?' 

'Never/ was the reply; *but you are a heretic. 
Wood is scarce this year, and the winter, they say, 
is like to be a hard one. I can ill afford the faggot, 
but I would fain do God service by helping to rid 
the earth of an accursed heretic; and therefore I 
make the sacrifice.' 

'O holy simplicity!' exclaimed the martyr. And, 
reaching out his hand, he drew the faggot toward 
him, and placed it against his side. Terhaps,' he 
said, 'the faggot may be a means of grace to both 
of usT 

*Give your body to be burned!' said Conscience 



The Will-o ' -the-Wisp 1 43 

to John Huss. 'Give your faggot to burn him!' 
said Conscience to the peasant woman. 
Is not this the Will-o'-the-Wisp ? 

V 

Then spake Jesus unto them, saying: *I am the 
Light of the World: he that followeth Me 
shall not walk in darkness, but shall have 
THE Light of Life/ And with that golden word 
of clear guidance ringing in our ears we say good- 
bye for ever to the Will-o'-the-Wisp. 



Ill 

THE DOCTOR'S CONVERSION 



I WISH I could introduce the old doctor in some more 
human fashion. Pen and ink are all very well in 
their way, but their way is not the best way. And 
no way but the best way is worthy of the doctor. 
You need to see him, to hear his voice, to feel his 
handclasp, and to breathe the atmosphere that is 
generated by his presence. I can never hope, 
through this lame medium, to give any impression 
of his bulky, though not ungainly, form; his 
venerable countenance; his silvery hair; his 
sparkHng eyes; his deep, rich, musical voice. It 
is worth a mile's walk on a wet day just to hear him 
laugh. An evening with the doctor is one of the 
luxuries of Hfe. 

As everybody knows. Doctor John Horner is the 
beloved and honoured minister of the church at 
Willoughby Street. He lives in the old stone, ivy- 
covered house behind the church, and the gloomy 
walk under the chestnut-trees to his door has been 
well worn by a constant stream of eager visitors. 

144 



The Doctor's Conversion 145 

Young people have walked along this shady path 
at the very summit of their felicity; and older folk 
have sometimes carried along it hearts as heavy as 
lead. For the doctor has been here now for over 
thirty years. He has watched the members of the 
Willoughby Street congregation grow up from 
childhood. Mr. Edward Westbrook, the secretary 
of the church, and his wife, are both of them con- 
scious of silver in their hair. But the doctor likes 
to remind them of a certain Sunday, in the early 
days of their courtship, when they sat together in 
church for the first time. The doctor has shared 
with them all the joys and sorrows of their happy 
wedded life. When each of the children was but a 
few days old, he stood reverently by the bedside and 
breathed upon mother and babe his benediction. 
When, fifteen years ago, Lily, the only daughter, a 
fair but frail girl, drooped and died, he, by his very 
presence, radiated comfort and courage in the 
stricken home. When business affairs are not going 
just to Mr. Westbrook's liking, he always says that a 
chat with the doctor is as bracing as a tonic or a 
holiday. *I always go back to the office whistling 
next morning,' he says, when he tells you about it. 
And when things at home are causing headache or 
heartache, it is to the doctor that Mrs. Westbrook 
always carries her worries. 'Somehow or other,' 
she says, *he always seems to understand. He 
listens to all that I say, and talks it over with me 
afterwards just as if the affairs we are discussing 



146 The Uttermost Star 

were his own. I have often seen his eyes moisten 
when we have been in trouble. But by the time that 
he has talked with me and prayed with me, I always 
feel that the worst is over, and that everything will 
be sure to come right after all.' Any of the scores 
of men and women whom you may see sitting with 
their young people in the stately old pews at Wil- 
loughby Street would speak of the doctor in exactly 
the same way. It is always a congenial topic of 
conversation. In every allusion that they make to 
him there is a singular mingling of reverence and 
endearment. The doctor has made himself the 
father of all his people; and, in the process, he has 
converted his pulpit into a throne. 

II 

For years after I met first the doctor I took it for 
granted that he had always been of the temper that 
we all so greatly honoured and so much admired. 
But one evening I made a discovery that quite 
astounded me. I had undertaken to preach some 
special sermons at Whitlington, and was met at the 
railway station by the minister of the church. 
After a cheerful tea and a short stroll, we settled 
down to an evening by the fireside. My hostess 
and her daughter busied themselves with their 
knitting; the minister and I just talked. I learned 
with surprise that he and the doctor were at college 
together. Instantly the current of our conversation 



The Doctor's Conversion 147 

set steadily along that channel. The theme was 
of mutual interest,- and seemed almost inexhaustible. 
All at once I made my discovery. 

*Yes,' remarked my host, leaning back in his chair 
meditatively, *I have never seen a greater change 
overtake the minister than the change that came over 
John Horner after he went to Willoughby Street/ 

*Indeed,' I replied, *and in what way?' 

*Oh, when next you see him, you must ask him 
to tell you the story of his conversion, as he calls it. 
As I told you, we were in college together; and we 
settled at about the same time in towns not far 
apart — he at Oakhampton and I at Trow ford. 
John was eight years at Oakhampton before he was 
called to Willoughby Street ; and he was in hot water 
all the time !' 

Tn hot water !' I exclaimed in astonishment. 

*In those days,' my host continued, 'John Horner 
was the greatest controversialist in our part of the 
country. He was always pitching into somebody. 
Once or twice a week, when you picked up the 
paper, you could rely upon finding a letter signed 
**John Horner" protesting against some local 
proposal or exposing the fallacy of somebody's 
argument. In almost every sermon he launched 
some violent attack or brought some scathing 
indictment. In such wordy warfare he was a most 
skilful swordsman. He knew how to thrust and how 
to parry. He was continually debating, contending, 
disputing; he was never happy unless some fierce 



148 The Uttermost Star 

storm of controversy was raging around him. 
Whenever he came to see me, he would rub his hands 
and ask, with eyes sparkling, and all his body in a 
ferment of excitement, whether I had seen his letter 
in the Courier. ''I've left him," he would exclaim, 
"without a leg to stand on; he'll never dare to 
reply!" To the religious papers, also, John sent 
his terrible philippics. He was the heart and soul 
of many a heated disputation; people knew, as soon 
as they saw his signature at the foot of a communica- 
tion, that things were likely to be lively; and editors 
welcomed his contributions for the sake of the 
simmer of excitement that they imparted to columns 
that were too often unconscionably dull. John 
gloried in a fight. I told him once that he reminded 
me of George Macdonald's "Waesome Carl." 

There cam a man to oor toon-en', 
And a waesome carl was he, 

Muckle he spied, and muckle he spak, 

But the owercome o' his sang, 
Whatever it said, was aye the same : — 

There's nane o' ye but's a' wrangl 
Ye're a* wrang, and a' wrang. 
And a'thegither a' wrang; 
There's no a man aboot the toon 
But's a'thegither a' wrang. 

As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I 
could see that John resented them. But he was on 
his defence in a moment. His eyes flashed. True 
religion, he exclaimed, is virile, militant, aggressive. 



The Doctor's Conversion 149 

The whole spirit of apostolic evangelism, he main- 
tained, was in the nature of a tremendous and sus- 
tained contention. Most of us, he declared, are too 
mealy-mouthed. Then, warming to his subject, he 
crushed me beneath a perfect avalanche of argu- 
ment. He overwhelmed me with an impressive 
pageant of ponderous authorities. I cowered before 
the fusillade and cannonade to which he pitilessly 
subjected me. Most heartily did I regret having 
had the temerity, on even a minor point, to differ 
from him. In those days John kept the whole town 
in a ferment. But you must ask him, when you go 
back, to tell you all about it. Say I told you to.' 

Ill 

The opportunity came more quickly than I could 
have expected. A few days later I was strolling 
through the park. I crossed the lawns and made my 
way down to the lake; and standing at the water's 
edge, watching the children feeding the swans, I 
saw the doctor himself. He greeted me warmly, 
and led me to a seat under a giant elm, and we sat 
there enjoying the glorious expanse of green grass, 
noble forestry, and shimmering water that, like a 
panorama, spread itself out before us. My oppor- 
tunity was not long in coming. He asked me about 
my visit to Whitlington. Had I seen his old friend 
there? And how were things going with him? I 
told him of the services, of the affairs of the Whit- 



I50 The Uttermost Star 

lington household, and then of the talk beside the 
fire. As soon as I had mentioned it, I saw that I had 
unwittingly revived an unpleasant memory. A 
cloud passed over his face, and he sat in silence, ap- 
parently looking at the swans. Then, all at once, 
he broke into laughter — laughter that had a little 
undertone of sadness — and began. 

*Ah, well,' he exclaimed, *an old minister ought 
not to be above telling a young minister of his early 
blunders; and that was certainly one of mine. At 
Oakhampton I indulged pretty freely my insatiable 
fondness for controversy, and I suppose I was fairly 
clever at it. But it was a mistake for all that. It 
doesn't pay, my dear fellow, it doesn't pay. I call 
those my "J^^^ Horner" days.' He laughed again, 
more heartily this time. *I don't suppose,' he went 
on, *I don't suppose the nursery rhyme was intended 
as a personal attack upon myself, although it takes 
liberties with my name; but it describes me to a 
nicety. I was everlastingly putting in my thumb 
and pulling out a plum and saying "What a good boy 
am I!" I spent seven years in this way; and then 
a thing happened that set me thinking. I was 
summoned one evening to visit a man who was 
dying. He was not a member of my own congrega- 
tion; but his minister was out of town, and he 
expressed a desire to see me. I went to him; re- 
minded him of the immutable foundations of our 
everlasting hope ; prayed with him ; and was coming 
away filled with those emotions which every minister 



The Doctor's Conversion 151 

experiences under such conditions. As I gently- 
clasped the dying man's hand to take farewell, he 
looked into my face with a strange and wistful 
sadness, and observed : 

* "I wish I had understood you better years ago!" 
' "Indeed!" I exclaimed. "And in what way?" 
*And then he told me that it was by means of my 

ministry that he had been led into the kingdom and 
service of Jesus Christ. He had come to the church 
one evening; I had preached a fervent evangelistic 
sermon; his attention was riveted, his soul was 
stirred, he had found his way to the Saviour. 

* "I came back the following Sunday," he went on 
to say, "but you were engaged in attacking the 
proposals of the Public Buildings Committee; and 
the following Sunday you were exploding the argu- 
ments of a certain Mr. Clinton. All that you said 
was very good and very true, and it was said with 
moderation and with judgment; but, somehow, I 
felt that I could not nourish my newly found faith 
on that kind of thing; so I went the following Sun- 
day to St. John's, and eventually joined that con- 
gregation. But as I listened just now to all that you 
said, and followed you in prayer, I could not help 
feeling what a gain it would have been to me had I 
understood you more perfectly." ' 

The doctor rose from my side and strolled a few 
feet in the direction of the lake, pretending to be 
interested in some of the elm leaves which he picked 
up, autumn leaves that had come fluttering down 



152 The Uttermost Star 

whilst he told me his story. He tossed the leaves 
away again, and resumed his seat. 

*He did not mean it as a rebuke/ he went on. 
'He merely intended it as a kind acknowledgment 
of my services and as a personal regret. But coming 
from the lips of a dying man, it affected me more 
than anything I had heard for years. This all hap- 
pened on the Tuesday. On the Friday I buried him ; 
and during those days I could think about nothing 
else.' 

He paused, and again seemed to be watching the 
swans, which, by this time, were out among the 
water-lilies in the centre of the lake. 

'During those days,' he continued, 'everything 
that I read and everything that I heard seemed to 
bear in some strange way upon that bedside conver- 
sation. It mattered little what book I took down 
from my shelves — theology, history, science, fiction 
— it was all the same. It seemed bent upon rebuking 
my contentious spirit. You know how, when one 
dominating idea holds all your mind, everything 
that you see and hear seems to stand related to it. 
So was it with me. I was reading at the time an old 
classic by Isaac Barrow, Newton's famous preceptor. 
I had scarcely opened the book that morning before 
the old professor began on this very theme. ''Avoid 
controversy at any cost," he says. "The truth 
contended for is not worth the passion expended 
upon it. The benefits of the victory do not atone 
for the prejudices aroused in the combat. Goodness 



The Doctor's Conversion 153 

and virtue may often consist with ignorance and 
error, seldom with strife and discord." With a 
heavy heart, I laid the volume aside ; and took down 
Richard Baxter, who first taught me how to be a 
minister. But — would you believe it? — I had not 
got through half a dozen pages before my old master 
burst out upon me. ''Another fatal hindrance," 
he said, "to a heavenly walk and conversation is our 
too frequent disputes. A disputatious spirit is a 
sure sign of an unsanctified spirit. They are usually 
men least acquainted with the heavenly life who are 
the most violent disputers about the circumstan- 
tiality of religion. Yea, though you were sure that 
your opinions were true, yet when the chief est of 
your zeal is turned to these things, the life of grace 
soon decays within. The least controverted truths 
are usually the most weighty and of most necessary 
and frequent use to our souls." I felt that my old 
master had but rubbed brine into my smarting 
wounds, and I returned him sadly to the shelf. 
That very afternoon I had occasion to dip into John 
Wesley's Journal, and under date October 9, 1741, I 
stumbled upon this : "I found Mr. Humphreys with 
Mr. Simpson. They immediately fell upon their 
favourite subject ; on which, when we had disputed 
two hours, and were just where we were at first, I 
begged we might exchange controversy for prayer. 
We did so, and then parted in much love, about two 
in the morning." In sheer despair I returned Wesley 
to his place, and forsook the theologians altogether. 



154 The Uttermost Star 

I picked up a volume of Darwin which, newly 
purchased, lay uncut on the desk. But, to my 
amazement, he was harping on the same old theme. 
**1 rejoice," he said, "that I have avoided contro- 
versies, and this I owe to Lyell, who many years ago, 
in reference to my geological works, strongly ad- 
vised me never to get entangled in a controversy, as 
it rarely did any good, and caused a miserable loss of 
time and temper." I put the volume back on the 
desk; and, fancying that relief would surely come 
with fiction, I slipped a novel into my pocket and, 
after tea, went out into the fields. It happened to 
be Mark Rutherford's Revolution in Tanner's Lane. 
Imagine my consternation on finding one of the 
characters, Zachariah Coleman, talking on this very 
subject! No controversy can be of any use, he 
says. "It leads to everlasting debate, and it is not 
genuine debate, for nobody really ranges himself 
alongside his enemy's strongest points ! It encour- 
ages all sorts of sophistry, becomes mere manoeu- 
vring, and saps people's faith in the truth." I went 
back to the house. How I spent the rest of the 
evening does not matter much to you or anybody 
else; but from that day to this I have never en- 
tangled myself in controversy again.' 

It was getting chilly; the dusk was falling, and we 
could no longer see the swans. We rose from the 
seat under the elm, and I saw the doctor to his home. 
As I walked back along the path under the chestnut- 
trees, I thought of all that Mr. Westbrook and 



The Doctor's Conversion 155 

others had told me of the doctor's long, rich, fruit- 
ful ministry at Willoughby Street; and I felt that 
the vow that he registered on that memorable night, 
more than thirty years ago, had been well kept and 
amply vindicated. 



IV 

HEATHER AND BLUEBELLS 

Come with me, and I will show you a few things well 
worth seeing, and introduce you to a few folk well 
worth meeting! And I promise that you will not 
look back upon our excursion as time thrown away ! 
Come along ! 

I 

And first to Scotland! All ministers have a soft 
place in their hearts for Scotland, and with good 
reason. Ministers, as becomes men who long to 
excel, glory in reading the noble records of those 
historic ministries that will stand as a model to all 
ministers as long as time shall last. And of such 
classical ministries Scotland has had more than its 
share. And no wonder ! Every clear-cut phase of 
national existence has its own ideal. The life of 
Greece, essentially contemplative, found its ideal 
in the Philosopher. The life of Rome, essentially 
militant, found its ideal in the Soldier. The life of 
Judea, essentially rehgious, found its ideal in the 
Prophet. But just once in the world's chequered 
history, one little nation, during a brief but memor- 

156 



Heather and Bluebells 157 

able epoch in its story, found its ideal in the Minister. 
Every Scottish father looked into the face of his boy 
and felt that it would be life's crowning honour, a 
consummation worthy of any sacrifice, if that boy 
of his were to be called to the sacred engagements of 
the Christian ministry. 

The old schoolmaster of Drumtochty, everywhere 
beloved and everywhere revered, did not often visit 
the homes of his pupils. But when he did, all the 
Glen knew that something of unusual importance 
was afoot. 

^George is a fine laddie, Mrs. Howe,' he said on 
one of those rare occasions. 'What do you think 
of making him?' 

Marget knew that the great hour of her life had 
come, the hour for which she had longed and wept 
and prayed. 'There was just a single ambition in 
those humble homes,' says Ian Maclaren, 'the ambi- 
tion to have one member of the family at college; 
and if Domsie approved a lad, then his brothers and 
sisters would give their wages and the family would 
live on skim milk and oatcake to let him have his 
chance.' 

'Maister Jamieson,' said Marget, *ma hert's 
desire is to see George a minister; and if the Al- 
mighty spared me to hear ma only bairn open his 
mooth in the Evangel, I would hae naething mair 
to ask ... but I doot sair it canna be managed !' 

Out of so warm and congenial an atmosphere 
there arose, as was to be expected, great ministers 



158 The Uttermost Star 

and great ministries. Now, standing on this bleak 
and windswept hilltop, the heather almost up to your 
knees, the shining waters of Loch Leven on the one 
hand and the deep glades of Dunsinane Wood on 
the other, have a good look around you ! For here, 
among these hills and valleys, there lived, not so 
very long ago, a group of ministers whose fragrant 
influence will abide upon this dusty old world of 
ours to its very latest day. To dip into any one of 
their biographies is like stepping into a garden of 
roses. For here, within easy riding distance of each 
other, there lived and laboured Robert Murray 
McCheyne, W. C. Burns, Alexander Somerville, 
Andrew and Horatius Bonar, and a number of other 
kindred spirits whose names are scarcely less fa- 
miliar. They all dwelt hereabouts. But come, the 
wind is too keen upon the hilltop ; let us stretch our 
legs! We will stroll down through the wood, in 
which primroses are twinkling and the squirrels 
making merry, into the odd little village of Kinrossie. 
Passing its pretty thatched cottages, its sleepy vil- 
lage green, and its quaint old market-cross, we 
will continue our stroll until we come suddenly upon 
the Free Kirk of Collace. It was here that Andrew 
Bonar — after whom Mr. Bonar Law is named — 
ministered for many years. Not far away, just on 
the fringe of the wood, is the old manse, almost 
hidden by its tall hedges and its clump of gloomy 
trees. You must come inside. This was Andrew 
Bonar's study. It is a dreamy old room, with a 



Heather and Bluebells 159 

vine and a fig-tree climbing up on either side of one 
of the windows. Now turn from that window to 
this one, and look not through it but over it. And 
carved deeply into the oak above the window you 
will see three Hebrew words. Translate them, and 
you have a text from the Book of Proverbs. 
'He that winneth souls is wise/ We are in no mood 
to-day to plunge into the grime and smoke of cities; 
but take my word for it that if we went to Glasgow, 
and visited the church in which Dr. Bonar exercised 
his later ministry, you would find the same three 
Hebrew words carved into the pulpit desk. Stand- 
ing in this quiet room, looking out on to this beauti- 
ful countryside, this Hebrew inscription seems 
strangely to revive the spirit and temper of that 
handful of devoted and scholarly and faithful min- 
isters who, less than a century ago, made these 
heathery hills and primrosed valleys to ring with the 
name and fame of their Lord. 

II 

To England now! And again we will keep 
far from the cities with their dust and smoke. Walk 
with me down this winding old lane, with its great 
elms arching overhead and its hedgerows all ablaze 
with hyacinths, stitchworts, vetches, and wild 
strawberries, and we shall come to a laughing little 
stream. You can trace its course, even at this 
distance, by the willows along its banks. The 
rabbits, startled by our approach, scurry into their 



i6o The Uttermost Star 

burrows under the hedge; a hare goes bounding 
off along the lane; and the finches are busy in the 
hawthorn. But here is a stile! We will take this 
short cut across the fields to the waterside. Just 
look at the bluebells and the daffodils waving on both 
banks ! A water-rat, uncertain as to our intentions, 
decides to take no risks. He drops with a splash 
into the water and strikes out bravely for the op- 
posite shore. We saunter gently along the side 
of the stream for half an hour, soothed by the music 
of its murmur, and then we discover that this tran- 
quil paradise is no monopoly of ours. There, just 
round the bend of the stream, sits a gentle old 
man, with rod in hand, his basket beside him, and 
his attention riveted upon his line. Now, to tell 
the whole truth, it is to meet this good old English 
gentleman that I have brought you here. He is 
one of the most lovable, one of the most thoughtful, 
and in every way one of the best men of his time. 
His hair is white as snow; there is a slight stoop 
at the shoulders, partly caused by age and partly 
by much bending over his beloved reel; but these 
are the only hints he gives of having long since 
passed his eightieth birthday. His face is strong and 
sometimes sad — for he has known terrible sorrows 
— yet it is suffused by a certain indescribable sweet- 
ness. His eye is bright and keen, especially when 
near the water, yet always infinitely restful. He is 
dressed neither showily nor shabbily, but with a 
pleasant trimness that suggests dignity and self -re- 



Heather and Bluebells i6i 

spect. When we speak to him you will discover that 
his voice is as soft as velvet and as musical as the 
waters beside which hie spends his days. No Eng- 
lishman is better worth knowing. He breathes, as 
Lamb said to Coleridge, the very spirit of innocence, 
purity, and simplicity of heart. For this is Izaak 
Walton, courtly, scholarly, saintly; and I have rea- 
sons of my own for seeking his society to-day. 

As soon as I discovered the three Hebrew words 
over Andrew Bonar's window in the old manse at 
Kinrossie, and again on the pulpit desk at Glasgow, 
I turned at once to the commentators. The words 
had aroused my curiosity, and I was anxious to 
ascertain their exact significance. 'He that winneth 
souls is wise.' The commentators, however, 
disappointed me. They suggested that the verb 
translated *winneth' is an angler's word; and then, 
like battleships hard pressed, they vanished in a 
cloud of smoke. Still, in a world like this, we must 
be thankful for small mercies; and the commen- 
tators have at least given us an interesting clue. 
He that is wise catcheth souls as an angler catches 
fish. Now if there is one man among my circle of 
friends who knows everything about angling it is 
old Izaak Walton. To him, therefore, always the 
soul of patience with honest inquirers, let us submit 
our problem. We must state it in the abstract. 
It is of no use mentioning the manse at Kinrossie, 
or the church at Glasgow; for Andrew Bonar was 
not born until poor old Izaak's bones had rested for 



1 62 The uttermost star 

more than a hundred years in their peaceful and 
grassy grave. To you and me, sublimely superior 
to the trivial accidents of time and space, that is a 
mere circumstance; but the old gentleman himself 
might find it a little confusing. The three Hebrew 
words, however, stood upon the pages of his Bible 
just as they stood upon the pages of Andrew Bonar's 
Bible; and just as they stand upon the pages of 
mine. See! The old gentleman has risen; he 
has thrown some ground-bait into the stream to 
secure his sport for the afternoon; and now he is 
retiring for the enjoyment of his lunch to a cosy 
niche against the gnarled trunk of that old willow- 
tree! Let us go forward! 

Ill 

*The words bear out,' says the gentle old man, 
after we have duly introduced ourselves and 
explained our mission, 'the words bear out what I 
have so often said to my own honest scholars. The 
work of catching men is very similar to the sport of 
catching fish. That is why four anglers — Peter, 
Andrew, James, and John — had priority of nomina- 
tion in the catalogue of the twelve apostles. Our 
Saviour found that the hearts of such men were, 
by nature, fitted for contemplation and quietness; 
they were men of mild and sweet and peaceable 
spirits, as most anglers are. The words that have 
puzzled you mean that to be a successful fisherman, 
a man must be very fond of his work. He must love 



Heather and Bluebells 163 

fishing and give his whole mind to it. Master 
John Bunyan, in that strange conceit which he has 
this very year pubHshed and which he calls his 
Pilgrim's Progress, truly says : 

You see the way the fisherman doth take 

To catch the fish ; what engines doth he make I 

Behold how he engageth all his wits ; 

Also his snares, lines, angles, hooks, and nets: 

Yet fish there be that neither hook nor line, 
Nor snare, nor net, nor engine can make thine; 
They must be groped for and be tickled too, 
Or they will not be catch'd, whate'er you do. 

*Now in order that you may the better perceive 
the meaning of these three Hebrew words that have 
so perplexed you, let me teach you the four rules 
of the angler's art, which I have cast into verse that 
they may be the more readily retained in the recol- 
lection of my own scholars : 

Be sure your face is towards the light: 

Study the fish's curious ways : 
Then keep yourself well out of sight: 

And cherish Patience all your days. 

He that will learn those four precepts and obey them 
will make a happy and successful angler, and will, 
if he so desire, acquire the wisdom that is celebrated 
in the Hebrew words you brought me.' By this 
time the old gentleman has finished his lunch and is 
looking wistfully towards the spot that he so well 



1 64 The Uttermost Star 

stocked with ground-bait. We may wish him a 
merry afternoon's sport and take our leave of him. 

IV 

And now, before we ourselves part company, let 
us spend a moment in my study surveying the spoils 
of our expedition. We have the three Hebrew 
words that we brought back from Scotland — 'He 
that winneth souls is wise.' And we have this curi- 
ous specimen of versification that we picked up 
among the bluebells by the English stream : 

Be sure your face is towards the light : 

Study the fish's curious ways : 
Then keep yourself well out of sight: 

And cherish Patience all your days. 

What are we to make of this? Let us take it to 
pieces, and examine the various parts under a 
microscope. And let the Angels of the Four Corners 
of My Study unfold its hidden meanings to us. 

'Be sure your face is towards the light!' *The 
skilful angler will always be careful to see,' says 
the Angel of the Eastern Corner, 'that the sun 
shines upon his face and that his shadow falls behind 
him. He who turns his back to the sun and lets his 
shadow darken the stream has said good-bye to all 
the trout. The only man who can hopefully angle 
for fish or for folk is he of the Radiant Face, he of 
the Shadow Unseen !' 

'Study the fish's curious ways!' *Let no man 



Heather and Bluebells 165 

think/ exclaims the Angel of the Western Corner, 
'that he can become a successful angler by learning 
all about lines and hooks and rods and reels! He 
must study fish. He must mark their varying 
habits, watch their curious ways, and consider their 
fastidious tastes. He must know the things that 
please them, the things that repel them, and the 
places in which they love to lie. He who would catch 
fish must study fish; he who would catch men must 
understand men!' 

'Then keep yourself well out of sight!' *He who 
would return from the river-bank with a heavy 
basket,' observes the Angel of the North Corner, 
'must angle with a long line! He must keep as 
far from the stream as he possibly can. No man 
ever yet secured large catches, either of fish or of 
men, who was fond of thrusting himself into inordi- 
nate prominence !' 

'And cherish Patience all your days!' *You will 
need it,' exclaims the Angel of the South Corner. 
'There will be times when you will have to wait for 
long, long periods without so much as a nibble; 
and you will be tempted to give it all up ! And you 
will be beset by a multitude of unexpected diffi- 
culties. "Oh, the tangles, more than Gordian, of gut 
on a windy day! Oh, bitter east wind that bloweth 
down stream ! Oh, the young ducks that, swimming 
between us and the trout, contend with him for the 
blue duns in their season ! Oh, the hay grass behind 
us that entangles the hook! Oh, the rocky wall 



i66 The Uttermost Star 

that breaks it, the boughs that catch it; the drought 
that leaves the salmon-stream dry, the floods that 
fill it with turbid, impassable waters ! Alas, for the 
knot that breaks, and for the iron that bends; for 
the lost landing-net and the gillie that scrapes the 
fish!" But the angler who has the spirit of his 
craft will keep smiling in spite of long delays and 
heart-breaking disappointments, and will enjoy the 
unspeakable rapture of the fisherman's triumph at 
the last r 

V 

And somehow I fancy that the Angels of the Four 
Corners have unwittingly expounded for us, not 
only the quaint old jingle that we found among the 
English bluebells, but those majestic Hebrew words 
that we saw amidst the Scottish heather. 



V 

THE VILLAGE GREEN 

A WISE old place is the Village Green. Since last 
I felt upon my spirit the fragrant breath of its 
peaceful benediction, I have crossed many seas and 
trodden many shores, but nowhere have I seen 
anything to equal it. Like all the best things in life, 
the Green is very modest; it does not advertise its 
virtues. As you drive round the bend of the dusty 
road, and, before plunging into the village itself, 
glance casually across the Green, you feel that it is 
the very essence of idyllic stagnation and dreamy 
repose. The signs of life are few and far between. 
Two old men sit smoking their long clay pipes in the 
deep shade of the clump of elm-trees in front of the 
inn; some ducks are scouring the pond yonder in 
quest of the frogs whose hoarse voices were so 
conspicuous last night; half a dozen cows lie, sleepily 
chewing the cud, round on the far fringe of the 
Green, where the grass is long and sweet, because 
scarcely ever trodden; some fowls from the row of 
cottages at the corner of the lane are foraging after 
grasshoppers in the shorter grass down by the pop- 
lars; swallows are skimming gracefully hither and 

167 



i68 The Uttermost Star 

thither, paying frequent visits to the pond, and occa- 
sionally settling for just a moment on rails and posts 
and empty seats ; a few creamy butterflies are danc- 
ing gaily over the grass on their way to the flaunt- 
ing sunflowers that call loudly from the garden of 
the inn ; but, save for these, there are no indications 
that anything is doing on the Green. To all intents 
and purposes the Green is fast asleep, and everything 
about it is also slumbering in the luxurious sunshine 
of this summer afternoon. 

Look across the pond, and you will see the old 
church sleeping among its gnarled and shady yews. 
The inn, down by the elms, is asleep. The horses 
round about the door, and the dogs sprawling at 
their feet, are all asleep. The cottages down at 
the corner of the lane are dozing too; lulled to rest 
by the droning of the bees around their scent-laden 
gardens. Everything appears to slumber. The very 
grasses nod half sleepily, and the whole place is 
wrapped in profound repose. You jump to the 
conclusion that nothing ever happens on the Village 
Green. But that is part of life's vast illusion. The 
people who do the world's work are all of them 
leisurely souls; they never hustle or bustle; they 
never get flurried or flushed. 

I once attended a farewell meeting tendered to a 
minister who, after a remarkably fruitful and 
prosperous pastorate extending over more than 
twenty years, was laying down his charge. The 
great hall was crowded ; there was a sense of genuine 



The Village Green 169 

sadness and poignant emotion in the temper of the 
meeting; the speakers vied with each other in sound- 
ing the good man's praises. I have forgotten all 
that they said. But I distinctly remember the 
utterance of a man who, towards the close of the 
meeting, craved the chairman's permission to add a 
single sentence. 'I have met Mr. Falkland nearly 
every day of my life for twenty years,' he said, *and 
I have never yet seen him in a hurry!' Mr. Falk- 
land told me afterwards that he treasured that 
tribute as the highest of the compliments paid him 
at the meeting. He had entered into the secret of 
the Village Green. 

There are souls that are so calm just because 
they are so strong. Mr. Harold Begbie has told us 
the story of Dolly, the actress, who, amidst all 
the whirl and the excitement of her public life, 
was overtaken by an affliction that rendered her 
stone deaf. Then, at last, freed from the rush and 
flurry of things, she had time to think. She thought 
especially of her children. Would she like them to 
model their lives on the style of her own? Then she 
thought of her widowed mother-in-law, so quiet, so 
tranquil, so patient, yet so strong. As she contem- 
plated the life and character of this beautiful old 
lady, Dolly felt for the first time the wisdom of 
goodness. 'She had lived a good life; her heart 
was pure; her hands were clean; her eyes were full 
of sweetness.' But she was dying. Dolly deter- 
mined to hasten to her bedside and crave of her, so 



lyo The Uttermost Star 

that she might hand it on to her children, the inner 
secret of her radiant and lovely life. 

*The widow put out her hand towards her Bible, 
but checked herself, and took a pencil and tablet 
which rested on a table at her side, and wrote the 
words : 

In returning and rest shall ye be saved; 

In quietness and in confidence shall be your strength. 

She did not point out the words in Isaiah, because, 
with her fine spirit, her thoughtfulness for others, 
which lasted to the very end of her life, she knew 
that poor Dolly would be hurt by the concluding 
words, ''And ye would not." Her finger pointed to 
the word "Rest" for a long time. Then it moved to 
''Quietness" and "Confidence" and finally to 
"Strength" where it tarried. Then she gave the 
paper to Dolly, and smiled into her eyes.' The 
strength of stillness! The conquest of the quiet! 
That is the secret of the Village Green. 

You would think, I say, to look at the Village 
Green, that nothing ever happens there. The fact 
is, of course, that everything happens there. The 
Village Green is a parliament and a playground and 
a pasture and a pulpit — and everything else ! Why, 
on the old seats there under the elm-trees, the seats 
that are smothered with rudely carved initials, the 
village cronies have sat smoking in the dusk, 
generation after generation, discussing the merits 
of rival statesmen and the splendid problems of 



The Village Green 171 

empire. Out there, too, on the centre of the Green, 
cricket-matches have been played that have, for 
long weeks beforehand, been the subject of animated 
speculation among all the hamlets and villages for 
miles around; and that have, in the result, made 
history. For you would not dare to confess, to the 
enthusiasts who sometimes gather beneath the elms, 
or sprawl upon the soft and fragrant grass, that you 
have never witnessed the prowess of certain well- 
known players who, once the pride of this very 
Green, were elevated to the fierce prominence of 
county contests, and are now named with respect 
in every pavilion and clubroom throughout the 
world ! On any Saturday afternoon, or in the long 
delicious evenings of midsummer, you may stand 
here on the edge of the Green, and, whilst the 
swallows skim cunningly about you, may hear these 
ploughmen and wagoners, bent with the heavy toils 
of tilth and pasture, tell for the thousandth time of 
the wild excitements that convulsed the Green in 
their days when a batsman of undying fame, who 
afterwards achieved international distinction, was 
the terror of every visiting team. 

Nor must I forget the avenue. Running right 
athwart the Green — leaving the cricket-ground, the 
clump of elms, and the inn on the one side; and the 
pond, the poplars, and the drowsy old church on the 
other — is a glorious grove of stately oaks. Here 
again, every fifty yards or so, you will find seats 
beneath the trees. But you will notice that, in 



172 The Uttermost Star 

contrast with those under the elms, these seats are 
almost innocent of the carved initials. It is true 
that these are not quite as ancient as those; but 
that, in itself, does not explain the difference. 
When these seats have held their places as long as 
those beneath the elms have now done, the number 
of initials cut in the wood will still be very small. 
The reason is not very obscure. The elm-trees, 
with the seats beneath them, form a natural pavilion 
for the cricket-matches and the sports upon the 
Green. There schoolboys congregate, having in 
their cavernous and comprehensive pockets knives 
of such superior calibre and keenness that 'twere a 
pity not sometimes to display their powers! And 
generations of batsmen, waiting, during the innings 
of their side, for their own turn to bat — or to field — 
have relieved the hours of tedium by plying their 
nervous fingers there. But the avenue is never the 
resort of the crowd. The avenue, you would soon 
learn if you stayed many days in the village, is 
consecrated by long tradition to the sacred rites and 
ancient mysteries of love-making. You cannot 
stroll up this umbrageous roadway after dusk with- 
out meeting at least one couple who will make you 
feel that they can content themselves without your 
company. And you will discover, perhaps with 
some slight flush of embarrassment, that all the 
seats are not unoccupied. It is just as well that these 
wooden things are mute. If they became magically 
invested with the power of speech, every housewife 



The Village Green 173 

in the village would clamour for their destruction, 
for have they not heard the whispered secrets of 
every home? The lovers of six generations have 
trysted and courted and quarrelled — and kissed 
again — within the shady shelter of these protecting 
trees; and they may have had reasons of their own 
for not carving their names upon the seats. Perhaps 
the light was not too good; perhaps they had other 
fish to fry; perhaps they had no desire to leave a 
perpetual record of their presence there. At any 
rate, the seats beneath the oaks escape such mutila- 
tion, as any one can see who cares to look. 

Grave and gay is the Village Green. If you want 
to see its gaiety, come some winter's day when the 
pond is frozen, and half the countryside is on skates. 
Or, better still, come some winter's night. I 
remember walking down to the Green one delectable 
moonlight evening, when everything was sparkling 
with the glittering whiteness of the heavy hoar frost. 
The arched network of branches overhead looked as 
though it had been worked in silver and sprinkled 
with star-dust. It was bespangled with millions 
of infinitesimal diamonds. Showers of these tiny 
gems seemed to have fallen off, beje welling the road 
beneath. It glistened in front of you, and clanked 
like iron beneath your tread. How one's cheeks 
glowed and one's ears tingled on a radiant night like 
that ! And long before I reached the Green I could 
hear the shouts and laughter of the skaters on the 
pond. Or, if you are not prepared to wait for such 



174 The Uttermost Star 

another winter's day, come along some fine morning 
when the hounds meet at the inn! The bravery of 
the huntsmen, resplendent in their scarlet coats ; the 
pride of the glossy horses, all restless with life and 
eager to be off; the joviality and excitement of their 
masters and mistresses, some in the saddle and some 
standing in little groups holding their horses' heads ; 
the yelping of the dogs; the sounding of the horn; 
the chatter of the cottagers who have come to see 
the start — here is gaiety such as none of your 
crowded cities could give you on an autumn morn- 
ing ! Or, if you would see the Green taking its night- 
time merriment, come on the evening of a fair-day 
or a fete-day, when the trees all twinkle with fairy- 
lamps ; the village band plays near the elm-trees ; and 
there is dancing on the Green. The trampling on the 
grass of so many feet loads the evening air with the 
strong, pungent odour of the turf; the mind is 
intoxicated with the prevailing sense of revelry; 
and the muscles dance involuntarily to the lively and 
captivating strains. 

Oh, yes, the Green knows how to be gay ; but the 
Green knows how to be grave. Have I not seen the 
Village Green turned into a church, and that not 
once, but many a time? As a boy I heard Mr. 
Moody preaching on the Village Green. He was the 
first preacher of world-wide fame to whom I had 
ever listened. I have heard many of our pulpit 
princes since; and often, in the years that followed 
that service on the Green, I again heard Mr. Moody. 



The Village Green 175 

But, when I think of him, it is the thought of that 
Sunday afternoon that rushes back upon my mind. 
The temporary platform on which he stood; the 
great black crowd; the languor of the sultry 
summer's day; the smell of the grass; the American 
twang in the preacher's voice; the text; the line 
of reasoning; the telling illustrations, and, above all, 
the passionate appeal, — these all come back upon me 
as I write. To me, at any rate, they are all in- 
separably associated with the picture of the Village 
Green. I said that I have seen this happen many 
and many a time. Aye, and not only in actual 
experience, but upon the pages of our best literature. 
How often, I wonder, did John Wesley preach on 
the Village Green? John Wesley brought about 
the greatest revival of religion in our history, and, 
according to Lecky, saved England from all the 
horrors of a terrible revolution. And this master- 
piece of daring evangelism and sanctified statesman- 
ship was accomplished very largely on the Village 
Green. 

For the matter of that, every Village Green is 
crowded with preachers. For what is the green but 
so many millions of blades of grass? And what is 
more eloquent than a blade of grass? When God 
visited the earth amidst the dews of Creation's 
earliest morning, the first thing that awoke to greet 
Him was a blade of grass. Until then the earth was 
without form and void, and darkness was upon the 
face of the deep. Then God came ! And the grass 



176 The Uttermost Star 

came ! And the grass led out the new age. It was 
the first thing on the planet, and it will be the last. 
As soon as that first blade of grass peeped out upon 
a world uncultivated and unoccupied, it vowed that 
it would conquer and possess every mountain and 
valley, every continent and island, every inch of soil 
the wide world over! And it did! It sprang up 
everywhere. It spread a carpet for the feet of the 
living and a covering for the graves of the dead. 
We brush it back sometimes in order to build a 
house, or a city, or an empire, just as children some- 
times keep back the tide for a while by building a 
brave castle with walls and outworks; but it is only 
for a while. The castle topples to pieces, and the 
water flows in ; the empire crumbles at last ; and the 
grasses wave proudly over the sites of fallen cities. 

*We have covered many square miles of earth 
with buildings,' says Mr. Scammell, in his Cheap- 
side to Arcady, *and the birds look down on a prov- 
ince of grey instead of the beloved and familiar 
green. Six miles or more outward from the centre 
of London lies the boundary-line of the world of 
trees and grass ; but we are surrounded and hemmed 
in by the sweet enemy, and nothing but the strenuous 
trampling of our millions of feet prevents the speedy 
reconquest of our city by the kingdom of vegetation. 
Some day the feet will be fewer and less strenuous ; 
houses will fall and not be rebuilt ; the tide of green 
will flow in, and that which was London shall be 
once more field and forest.' Casual passers-by re- 



The Village Green 177 

gard the grass as an ephemeral thing, here to-day 
and gone to-morrow. But the wise know better. 
The old yew-trees there behind the church are a 
thousand years old; but the grass was there before 
the yew-trees sprouted, and the grass will still be 
there when the yew-trees are no more. If you bend 
your ear, you will hear a whispering among the 
grasses. The grasses on the Green are always whis- 
pering. And there is a ripple of quiet laughter run- 
ning through all that they say. It is the laughter of 
conquest. 

Preachers of immortality are these deathless 
grasses on the Green. Did not Peter once draw a 
striking and dramatic analogy between the three 
most persistent things on the planet — the grass, the 
man, and the Word of the Lord? Tor all flesh,' 
he says, 'is as grass, and all the glory of man as the 
flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the 
flower thereof falleth away; but the Word of the 
Lord endureth for ever.' 

The Grass! The Man! The Word! 

These are the three most universal, immortal, 
invincible things on the face of the earth ! The grass 
withers, and the petals of its flower blow away on 
the wind; yet it rises again and conquers every- 
thing! Man drops into the grave, and his glory is 
forgotten; yet, like the grass, he is everywhere, 
master of everything, the most godlike thing under 
the stars! But the Word outshines them both; 
for it never even fades or falls, never even dries or 



178 The Uttermost Star 

dies. 'It liveth and abideth for ever!* Year in 
and year out, it is as fresh and as sweet every morn- 
ing as the dewy grass on the Green ; and, age in and 
age out, its glory grows from more to more. 

Crowded with preachers is the Village Green. 
Perhaps that is why George Eliot chose the Village 
Green as the scene of Dinah Morris's sermon. 'She 
stood with her left hand towards the descending sun, 
and leafy boughs screened her from its rays; but 
in this sober light the delicate colouring of her face 
seemed to gather a calm vividness, like flowers at 
evening. It was one of those faces that make one 
think of white flowers with light touches of colour 
on their pure petals. The eyes had no peculiar 
beauty, beyond that of expression; yet they looked 
so simple, so candid, so gravely loving, that no 
accusing scowl, no light sneer, could help melting 
away before their glance.' 

Dinah spoke of John Wesley, whom she had heard 
preaching on a Village Green, and whom she, as a 
child, had imagined to be a special messenger sent 
down from heaven. As she gazed upon his finely 
chiselled face and pure white hair, and as she listened 
to his deep, rich voice and earnest speech, she had 
wondered if he would suddenly vanish and be caught 
up into heaven again ! 

And then Dinah spoke, as Wesley himself had 
spoken, of Jesus. 'The Son of Man is come to seek 
and to save that which is lost' — this was her text. 
With womanly winsomeness and womanly entreaty, 



The Village Green 179 

she drew the hearts of the villagers towards her 
Saviour. Beneath the vast dome of St. Paul's or 
under the spreading branches of the elm-trees, it is 
a great and wonderful evangel; and we may very 
well leave the Village Green now that we have again 
caught the sweetness of that heavenly music. 



VI 

THE SIEVE 

I WAS spending a few days at the spacious farm- 
house that nestles under the shadow of Saddle Hill. 
It was getting towards evening. The boys had, one 
by one, sauntered in from the stables and the fields ; 
the girls had returned from the byre. It was past 
tea-time; yet the evening meal stood untasted on 
the vast kitchen table. The snowy cloth was 
temptingly spread; piles of white scones and crisp 
oatcakes tantalized the appetite: the kettle sang 
merrily on the hob; and yet we waited. For my 
good hostess, the farmer's wife, had gone to town 
for a day's shopping, and had not yet returned. 

*If she catches the five-twenty, she'll be home in 
ten minutes,' pleaded Jean, with a coaxing glance at 
her hungry brothers. 'Let's wait till then !' 

And, surely enough, in a few minutes there was a 
sound of wheels, and the good woman came bustling 
in with her parcels. The daughters of the farm 
withdrew to their mother's room, primarily, of 
course, to help her off with her hat and coat, and, 
just incidentally, to have a peep at her purchases. 
And then, to the undisguised satisfaction of the 

1 80 



The Sieve i8i 

boys, the family circle was completed, and the meal 
began. All went merrily until, in the very midst of 
our festivity, the chink of cups and the hum of con- 
versation were suddenly interrupted by my hostess. 
In answer to a question from Bella, she threw her- 
self back in her chair, lifted her hands in a gesture of 
amazement, and exclaimed : 

*Why, I do declare, I forgot the very thing I went 
for. Oh dear, oh dear ; I've got a head like a sieve !' 

Now I spent so many delightful days under her 
hospitable roof that I am reluctant to subject her 
utterance to public criticism. And yet I cannot 
allow her unhappy metaphor to pass unchallenged. 
A memory like a sieve, indeed ! No simile could be 
more false to fact. It is the essential property of a 
sieve to allow the fine sand to escape whilst retaining 
the larger nuggets. But did she not herself tell us 
that it was the important thing — the very thing 
she went for — that slipped her memory? That is 
characteristic of the memory. It is very rarely like 
a sieve. In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred it is 
the big things that elude it, whilst a conglomeration 
of trifles remains. 

In one of his soliloquies the Poet at the Breakfast- 
table tells how, an old man now, he distinctly remem- 
bers being cheated out of sixpence by an old straw- 
berry-woman at an English fair fifty years ago. Yet 
a hundred matters of really first-class importance 
have failed, during that half -century, to make any 
lasting impression on his memory! *What an odd 



i82 The Uttermost Star 

thing memory Is,' he exclaims, in telling the tale, 
*to have kept such a triviality and to have lost so 
much that was invaluable! She is a crazy wench, 
that Mnemosyne; she throws her jewels out of the 
window, and locks up straws and old rags in her 
strong-box.' A man remembers the first fish that 
he ever caught long after many of the more vital 
events In his career have faded from his mind. 
With perfect clearness he will recall to his dying day 
the shining, scaly trout, flapping in its death-flurry 
on the green bank under the willows. The winning 
hit that a man once made for the school eleven 
lingers in his thoughts long after the twists and turns 
of his later history have passed Into the obscurity of 
forgetfulness. The thrill of that glorious moment 
will rush back upon him In his last illness. These 
are the happenings that haunt the memory. 

Perhaps the apparent discrepancy is due to our 
false estimate of things. It Is possible that the 
memory has a truer sense of proportion, a more just 
perspective, than we are wont to suppose. An artist 
does not select his subject because of Its commercial 
value or historic importance. A rustic cottage may 
be much more attractive to his brush than a king's 
palace, a parliamentary building, or a stock ex- 
change. Memory claims to be allowed to judge 
things, as the artist does, by standards of her own. 
I was talking one day to a friend of mine who, a few 
years ago, lost his sight. He was telling me that he 
remembers with singular vividness a walk that he 



The Sieve 183 

once took from his native town in England to a 
neighbouring village. He v^as sent by his father 
with a most important message. But he has for- 
gotten now what that message was. He only 
remembers a squirrel that he saw in a beech-tree 
down the lane along which his journey took him. 
Now my blind friend would, at the time, have 
regarded the business that took him along the lane 
as of very much greater moment than the squirrel 
he saw perched saucily in the beech-tree; but the 
memory has tossed to the scrap-heap the mission on 
which he travelled, whilst he sees the squirrel to-day 
as clearly as he saw it thirty years ago. And, on 
the whole, he is convinced that memory is right. The 
squirrel is the thing that is best worth remembering. 
As I sit scribbling on this Australian verandah, 
and think of my own childhood on the other side 
of the world, I find that the things that most easily 
rush back upon me are not the important things. I 
remember — oh, how clearly! — my first circus! 
I went up to the top of our street in the dinner-hour 
to see it enter the town ! The elephants, the camels, 
the cages of wild beasts, and the huge triumphal 
cars ! On one, at a height that made me dizzy as I 
looked up, sat Britannia, attended by a bevy of 
beautiful princesses; on another sat a haughty 
conqueror, surrounded by his officers and followed 
by his slaves. Here in the procession rode Red 
Indians in full war-paint, with moccasins and bowie- 
knives. There were men of all kinds and colours; 



1 84 The Uttermost Star 

how could I ever forget the wonder of that tremen- 
dous moment? And then there was the day when, 
a small boy, I went to school as usual and was told 
on arrival that Mr. Farncombe, the old schoolmaster, 
was dead! Would I like to see him? I was afraid, 
and did not like to say so ; at last stammered feebly 
a reluctant consent; and was led, with half a dozen 
other shrinking and terror-stricken youngsters, past 
the coffin in which our old master lay so frightfully 
stiff and still. Can I ever forget that weird, uncanny 
moment, or the strange, unearthly dreams of the 
night that followed? And then there was a day 
when there was some little commotion in the home. 
I forget what it was all about; I know that my 
mother was ill in bed, and sent to know the cause of 
all the hubbub. As a result, I remember that I 
was haled before her, charged with having done 
something or other of which, as it happened, I was 
entirely innocent. 

*And did you do it?' my mother asked, looking 
up from her pillows. 

'No, mother !' I answered. 

*Then that's the end of it,' she said to the nurse 
who had me in charge. *If he says he didn't, he 
didn't!' 

I was set at liberty, and scampered away feeling 
that my mother was the sweetest creature that ever 
breathed, and thinking what a horrid thing it would 
be to deceive her. 

These are the things that the memory treasures. 



The Sieve 185 

They do not seem to be the critical hours of a man's 
experience, the pivotal points on which his career 
turned. Life would have gone on in pretty much 
the same way if these things had never happened. 
And yet it may be, as I have suggested, that the 
memory has a more just standard of values than we 
sometimes think. Let me look at these things again. 
The day on which I saw the circus was the day on 
which a world-consciousness was born within my 
soul. I had read of elephants that crashed through 
African forests, and of camels that crossed Arabian 
deserts, and of tigers that haunted the jungles of 
Bengal. I had heard of conquering heroes, of 
tattooed savages, of feathered Indians, and of 
woolly-headed slaves! But here they all were! 
I was too excited to reflect that it was largely a 
matter of dye and drapery ! To me it was the world ! 
All the continents and islands had suddenly swept 
into my soul. In bewildering and overpowering 
pageantry, they burst upon me all in a moment! 
And my memory treasures not the objective cause, 
which was trifling, but the subjective effect, which 
was tremendous! And that ghostly scene at the 
old school ! My memory clings to it as the occasion 
on which death and I first looked into each other's 
faces. And the incident in my mother's bedroom! 
It was the hour in which I learned the meaning of 
faith. My mother trusted me; believed me 
implicitly; and life seemed a greater, holier thing 
in consequence. Is it not possible that memory 



i86 The Uttermost Star 

discriminates with extraordinary insight and 
wisdom ? She knows what to hoard up and what to 
throw away. Like the artist, she has her own 
standard of values; and the more we examine that 
standard, the more we shall admire it. The little 
things she treasures so jealously are, more often 
than not, the biggest things in life after all! 

Moreover, there is this to be said. The memory 
not only knows what to keep, but, having kept it, 
she knows where to find it, and how to use it, when 
the occasion at length arises. In It is Never Too 
Late to Mend, Charles Reade tells how a party of 
miners belonging to the gold-diggings in New South 
Wales went for a stroll one Sunday and came upon 
the settlement of a new immigrant who had brought 
out with him from England a caged lark. The 
savage men gathered round the cage, but the bird 
was strangely silent. *And then the same sun that 
had warmed his little heart at home came glowing 
down on him here, and he gave music back for it 
more and more, till at last, amidst the breathless 
silence and the glistening eyes of the rough diggers 
hanging on his voice, out burst in this distant land 
his English song. Sometimes, when he paused, a 
loud sigh from many a rough bosom, many a wild 
and wicked heart, told how tight the listeners had 
held their breath to hear him; and when he swelled 
with song again, he seemed to every one of those 
rough men to be singing of the green meadows, the 
quiet brooks, the honey clover, and the English 



The Sieve 187 

spring. Shaggy lips trembled, and more than one 
drop trickled from fierce, unbridled hearts down 
bronzed and rugged cheeks. For these shaggy men, 
full of oaths, and strifes, and cupidity, had strolled 
about the English fields with sisters and brothers, 
had seen the lark rise and had heard him sing this 
very song. Those old playmates lay in the church- 
yard, whilst they themselves were full of oaths, and 
drink, and lusts, and remorses; but, in this 
immortal song, no note was changed. And so, for 
a moment or two, years of vice rolled away like a 
dark cloud from the memory, and the past shone 
out in the song-shine. They came back, bright as 
the deathless notes that lighted them, those faded 
pictures and those fleeted days; the cottage; the 
old mother's tears when he left her without one 
grain of sorrow; the village church and its simple 
chimes; the clover-field hard-by in which he lay 
and gambolled while the lark praised God overhead ; 
the chubby playmates that never grew to be wicked ; 
the sweet hours of youth, and innocence, and home !' 
When the treasure was stored away in the casket 
of memory, it was only the trill of a lark in the 
English fields; but, like pence that had been 
magically transformed into pounds, it became 
invested by the passing years with a deep significance 
and a spiritual value. Many of the really funda- 
mental events in the lives of these Australian diggers 
the memory had tossed away. She had kept no 
record of them. But she had carefully treasured 



1 88 The Uttermost Star 

up the song of the lark and the vision of the English 
fields. And she knew why. Her discrimination is 
almost infallible. I wonder if any such thought 
entered into the mind of the Great Teacher when He 
spoke of laying up for ourselves treasures that no 
moth can corrupt, that no rust can defile, and that 
no thief can break through and steal? 



PART III 



SLIP I 

The deck of an ocean-liner in a tropical sea is the 
laziest place on the planet. Nobody dreams of 
promenading. During the intervals between meals 
the deck-chairs are all occupied, and each chair is 
carefully adjusted to such an angle that the occupant 
is practically reduced to horizontality. Fancy- 
work reposes peacefully on the laps of the ladies, 
and a few brave spirits keep up a pretence at reading. 
But the book, however exciting, fails to grip; and 
every now and again the hand collapses beneath its 
burden, whilst the eyelids involuntarily close. For 
the rest, we sprawl and doze and dream, and await 
the sounding of the next gong. 

Henniker and I had just come up from afternoon 
tea. We sat down side by side and abandoned 
ourselves to the prevailing lethargy. I must have 
fallen asleep ; for when I opened my eyes, the chair 
that Henniker had occupied was empty, and the 
Chief Engineer was approaching. He took the 
vacant seat, and, after a few preliminary inquiries 
and observations, began to talk about things in his 
own department. He was disappointed, it seemed, 

191 



192 The Uttermost Star 

with the previous day's run. We had done three 
hundred and thirty knots; he thought it should 
have been three hundred and forty. 

*Well,' I said, *and how do you account for it?' 
'Oh,' he repHed, 'it can only be owing to slip/ 
I had to confess that the expression conveyed 
nothing to my mind, and he considerately proceeded 
to dispel my ignorance. 

*0h, well, you see,' he explained, 'all that we 
can do down in the engine-room is to see that a 
maximum of power is generated by the furnaces 
and communicated by the engines to the shaft. 
But a certain waste of energy takes place between 
the propeller and the water. It may be that a 
heavy sea lifts the screw into the air occasionally. 
Or it may be that the pitching of the vessel keeps 
the screw too much in the light water near the 
surface instead of in the heavier water deeper down. 
Or it may be that, for some other reason, the water 
does not offer the necessary resistance to the blades 
of the propeller. That waste of energy, however 
it occurs, we call slip. Yesterday, if the slip had 
been normal, we ought to have done three hundred 
and forty knots. As it is, we only did three hundred 
and thirty. The slip must have been more serious 
than we thought.' 

Almost immediately he was called away. But as 
I sat there on the deck, with the empty chair at my 
side, I found that the information with which the 
Chief Engineer had supplied me provided food for 



Slip! 193 

a good deal of reflection. One has not to go to an 
ocean-liner in Mid-Atlantic in order to discover cases 
of slip. Accidents will happen in the best regulated 
families. Wherever there is a generation of energy, 
there is a greater or smaller escape of energy. 
Wherever there is pov^er, there is slip. Indeed, in 
thinking it over since, I am convinced that my 
friend, the Chief Engineer, is less troubled by slip 
than most of us. His work is liable to slip at but one 
point — the point at which the propeller strikes the 
water — whilst the work of most of us is subject to 
slip at quite a number of points. 

Take the artist, for example. He comes most 
readily to mind, because I have just left him. I 
was strolling along the beach this afternoon, enjoy- 
ing the expanse of blue water to my right, the stretch 
of yellow sand before me, and the riot of green for- 
estry extending to the horizon on my left. I clam- 
bered over a pile of rocks round which the waves 
were playing, and, under their shadow, came sud- 
denly upon a painter busy at his easel. He was fac- 
ing a massive bluff of red sandstone surmounted by 
a tangle of tea-tree and scrub. I entered into con- 
versation with him, and was soon confirmed in mv 
impression, that, in his case, slip may occur, not at 
one point, but at several. To begin with, however 
carefully he may scrutinize the great cliff in front 
of him, something of its ruggedness and beauty is 
sure to escape him. A greater artist would discover 
some gleam of light or shade that he fails to notice. 



194 The Uttermost Star 

And with the greater artist it is only a matter of 
degree; he would observe more, but he would still 
miss something. Then, in the second place, there 
is a certain amount of slip in expression. My 
friend the artist confessed that he could never 
convey to his canvas all the beauty that he did see. 
The picture in his soul is always a little lovelier than 
the work upon the easel. And then, later on, there 
is a certain amount of slip in the eye of the admirer 
of the picture. For the picture is not for the painter ; 
it is for the public. And the most appreciative 
observer never sees in the picture all that the artist 
sees in it. At these three points, therefore, there 
is slip. There is slip in the painter's observation of 
the subject treated; there is slip in his attempt to 
express on canvas the beauty that has charmed his 
eye; and there is slip in the perception of the 
spectator who afterwards gazes, however sympa- 
thetically, upon the painter's handiwork. 

But I owe the artist an apology. I have pressed 
him into my service violently and at random. Like 
Jephthah's daughter, he was the first person I met 
in the course of my seaside cogitation of my theme; 
and I consequently seized upon him as my victim. 
But he will not, I hope, object to my stating that 
anybody else would have served my purpose just 
as well. It is true that nobody sees in the picture 
all that the painter puts there; but, then, the same 
principle holds true of every worker. Supposing, 
when I clambered over the boulders that projected 



Slip I 195 

into the surf, supposing that I had found, reclining 
in the shade on the other side, not an artist, but a 
statesman, or a musician, or an author, or a preacher. 
Either would have provided me with an equally 
welcome victim, and, like Jephthah, I should have 
hurried him off to my altar. For, however carefully 
the statesman expounds his proposals to the House, 
his scheme is never perfectly apprehended. A 
certain amount of slip occurs in his own exposition 
of his ideas; and a further element of slip character- 
izes the perception of his hearers; and so the policy 
that reaches their intelligences is little more than a 
shadow of the splendid project that stirs his soul to 
such enthusiasm. And as he listens to the damaging 
speeches of his opponents, and reads the adverse 
criticisms of the newspapers, he is tortured by the 
conviction that, to a very large extent, he has been 
misunderstood. It is a case of slip. It is the same 
with the musician. The most fervent admirers of 
Beethoven, or Wagner, or Chopin, or Handel, do not 
hear in the oratorio all the sublimities and profundi- 
ties that swept the soul of the composer when first he 
committed his passion to paper. Only the author 
can perfectly appreciate a book. His writings must, 
of course, stand or fall by the judgment of others. 
It is his business, not only to think great thoughts, 
but skilfully to convey those thoughts to other 
minds. His fine conceptions will not excuse his 
faulty expressions. But for all that, the fact 
remains that the most brilliant writer cannot so 



196 The Uttermost Star 

arrange his language as to make it a perfect vehicle 
for his thought. Something is lost in communicat- 
ing his meaning to his manuscript. And even the 
best of readers sometimes nods. All that the author 
thought is not written ; and all that is written is not 
read; and so, at both stages, slip takes place. And 
if, resting on the sands, I had chanced upon a 
minister, I am certain that I should have found 
him a victim exactly to my taste. 

For neither the artist, nor the statesman, nor the 
musician, nor the author is as much troubled by slip 
as the preacher. At the outset, the themes with 
which he deals are so sublime, so awful, so incom- 
prehensible, that, in the nature of the case, his 
conception of them must be very partial and very 
inadequate. Then, like the statesman and the 
author, he is under the humiliating necessity of 
employing language as the medium of his thought. 
And it is a very imperfect medium. As Tennyson 

says: 

. . . words, like Nature, half reveal 
And half conceal the soul within. 

Words — even if he always selects the best words — 
mean different things to different people, and convey 
different notions at different times. And then, 
again, he does not always select the best words. 
The man has never been born whose command of 
language amounted to absolute perfection; and, so 
far as it falls short of absolute perfection, he must 
perforce convey by his utterance something less. 



Slip! 197 

or something more, or something other than his 
meaning. In spite of all oaths and affidavits, no 
man ever yet told the truth, the whole truth, and 
nothing but the truth. It is not in the power of 
mortals to do it. Let two men, transparently honest 
and scrupulously careful, tell of an experience 
which they have shared; and the tales will differ 
materially in the telling. The impression conveyed 
by the one will diverge at several points from the 
impression created by the other. Language being 
what it is, and the human mind being what it is, it is 
impossible to speak without unconsciously under- 
stating, or overstating, or falsely stating the case. 
A liberal quantity of slip must therefore characterize 
the attempt of the preacher to express to his hearers 
his own very imperfect conceptions. And what of 
the congregation? Even if all his conceptions were 
immaculate, and all his language faultless, he must 
still allow for a certain amount of slip. Between 
his own lips and the perceptions of his hearers there 
are innumerable avenues for the leakage of his 
energy. The acoustic properties of the building 
may not be perfect. The ears of the congregation 
may not be good. Sultry conditions or defective 
ventilation may induce drowsiness. And then, 
even at the best of times, thoughts are wayward 
things. Minds will wander. Even during the 
delivery of his most impassioned periods, the men 
will, in a flight of fancy, shp back to their offices; 
the mothers will be once more among the little ones 



iqS The Uttermost Star 

at home; the young men and maidens will be 
dreaming romantically of each other. Everything 
is not heard; and, even if heard, everything is 
not fully comprehended. Slip occurs at every 
point. 

The only remedy for this lies in sane and judicious 
repetition. It is the duty of the pulpit to say the 
same things over and over and over again. They 
must be clothed in different phraseology, and illu- 
mined by fresh illustration, and approached by a 
new line of thought; but the things that are really 
worth saying must be said repeatedly. Allowances 
must be made for slip. I remember that, some years 
ago, an idea laid hold of me with more than ordinary 
force. It was burning in my bones. I felt it my 
duty to give utterance to it at every possible oppor- 
tunity. I took it into my pulpit, and stated it, as 
effectively as I possibly could, to my own people. 
A week or two later I was invited to speak at a 
Methodist anniversary. I delivered my soul again 
on the same theme; but I noticed in the audience 
one gentleman, a prominent citizen, and a man of 
considerable culture and devotion, whom I distinctly 
remembered to have seen in my own congregation 
when I first broached the theme. A week later I 
was under an engagement to address a large public 
meeting in the City Hall. I once more harked back 
to my old subject; and, to my horror, as I was 
speaking, I caught sight of the face of my former 
hearer. I felt ashamed to be saying the same things 



Slip! 199 

to him a third time. But I thought of the words, 
^ Jesus saith unto him the third time . . . ' and pro- 
ceeded to state my case as forcibly as I knew how. 
At the close of the meeting, as I was leaving the hall, 
I found my friend waiting, and not to rebuke me. 
*I was greatly impressed/ he said, 'by what you 
were saying to-night,' and he went on to tell me of 
what he himself proposed to do in the matter. 
He gave no hint of having heard me speak on the 
subject twice previously. Apparently I had then 
made no impression. Whether it was my fault 
or his is beside the question. The point is that slip 
takes place, and we must allow for it. 'Jesus saith 
unto him the third time' — and so must we. 

It may be that, one of these days, we shall discover 
that the slip of life is less than we fancied. We may 
find that the escaped energy, although it did not 
propel the ship, served some other useful purpose. 
Longfellow made some such discovery : 

I shot an arrow into the air, 
It fell to earth, I know not where ; 
For, so swiftly it flew, the sight 
Could not follow it in its flight. 

I breathed a song into the air. 
It fell to earth, I know not where; 
For who has sight so keen and strong 
That it can follow the flight of song? 

Long, long afterwards, in an oak 
I found the arrow, still unbroke; 
And the song, from beginning to end, 
I found again in the heart of a friend. 



200 The Uttermost Star 

Those who make such dehghtful discoveries may be 
left to enjoy their felicity undisturbed. But, since 
we are living in a world in which some arrows go 
astray and some songs fall flat, it is as well to take 
no risks. A wise man will allow for slip. Does the 
arrow appear to have missed its mark? He will 
draw the bow again. Does the song seem to have 
reached the heart of nobody? He will straightway 
tune his voice, like Browning's thrush, to sing a 
second time. 



II 

THE FOUR IDOLS 

We are all idolaters. It is in the blood. Race 
memory is a wonderful thing. Old Bruno lies 
sprawling there on the mat. The children can pull 
at his ears; the kittens can play with his tail. He 
takes no notice. He blinks and bears it. What is 
he dreaming about as he lies dozing there with his 
nose resting on his paws, the very picture of tameness 
and domesticity? Jack London says that a dog 
only has one dream. He is back in the forest 
primaeval. He is dreaming of the old wolf-days; 
the days when his ancestors were fierce and wild; 
the days when every mouthful of food was won by 
ripping and slashing, by the stern authority of tooth 
and fang. He is a wolf yet in the soul of him, a 
wolf with all his wolfishness under severe and galling 
restraint. And so, I say that, after the same fashion, 
we are all idolaters. We may not now worship Thor 
and Woden, Freya and Tyr, at least under those 
names; but we have our idols yet. Francis Bacon, 
in a passage which Macaulay regarded as among the 
very greatest and most influential contributions ever 
made to literature, charged us with worshipping 

20I 



202 The Uttermost Star 

four. And he named them. Beware, he said, 
beware of the Idols of the Tribe ; beware of the Idols 
of the Cave; beware of the Idols of the Market- 
place; beware of the Idols of the Theatre! Bacon 
was concerned with these counterfeit divinities as the 
enemies of pure reason, the foes of accurate thought, 
the perverters of sound judgment; but we need be 
bound by no such narrow limits. 



There is the Idol of the Tribe. It is the contagion 
of the crowd; the tendency to applaud when the 
multitude applauds and to hiss when the people hiss ; 
the disposition to do as everybody else does. A 
recent traveller speaks of a certain island upon which 
he came in the course of his voyagings. It was a 
perfect paradise. Its climate was of the softest; 
its vegetation the most luxurious; its flowers the 
most beautiful and fragrant; its birds of the most 
exquisite and gorgeous plumage. The inhabitants 
seemed, on first acquaintance, to be gentle and 
kindly. But, to his horror, he quickly discovered 
that the people cherished the most hideous and 
revolting superstitions, and practised the most 
frightful and abominable cruelties. No individual 
member of the tribe could defend these horrible 
proceedings. Indeed, each individual, consulted 
separately, condemned and deplored them. Each 
trembled lest he should himself one day fall a victim 
to their insatiable demands. Yet the thing went on ! 



The Four Idols 203 

It had always been so ; it had never been challenged ; 
everybody on the island submitted to it; nobody 
thought of questioning its continuance. Each was 
the victim of all, and, unwittingly and unwillingly, m 
each helped to tyrannize all! Here, then, is the ^ 
Idol of the Tribe ! One has not to go to the South 
Seas to find it. 

Why do we dress as we do — one way this season 
and another way next season? Why do we dress 
one way; the Chinese in another way, and the Red 
Indians in still another w^ay? Who ordains these 
arrangements, both as to general outline and par- 
ticular style ? We obey the Idol of the Tribe. Here 
are two brothers, Oliver and Godwin Peak, engaged 
in conversation. They are, of course, George Gis- 
sing's creations, but I may borrow them from Born 
in Exile. 'Oliver was going out ; his silk hat, a hat 
of the very latest fashion, lay with his gloves upon 
the table. 

'What is this thing?' inquired Godwin, with 
ominous calm, as he pointed to the piece of headgear. 

*A hat, I suppose,' replied his brother. 

*You mean to say you are going to wear that in 
the street?' 

*And why not ?' 

'Can't you feel,' burst out Godwin, 'that it's a 
disgrace to buy and wear such a thing ?' 

'Disgrace! What's the matter with the hat? Ifs 
the fashionable shape I' 

Godwin turned contemptuously away. But 






> 'J 



b4 The Uttermost Star 

Oliver had been touched in a sensitive place, and 
was eager to defend himself. 

*I can't see v^hat you're finding fault with,' he 
exclaimed. 'Everybody wears this shape!' 
i "jj 'Everybody!' replied Godwin, with withering 
"^ disdain. 'Everybody. How you can offer such 
an excuse passes my comprehension. Have you no 
selff Are you made like this hat, on a pattern with 
a hundred thousand others T 

Now what in the world is this that we have 
unexpectedly discovered in listening to two brothers 
as they discuss the hat that lies upon the table? 
It is nothing less than a resurrection of the Baconian 
philosophy ! For see ! 

'Everybody wears this shape!' pleads poor 
Oliver. 

'Everybody! Have you no self?' demands the 
angry Godwin. 

It is Godwin's way of charging his brother with 
being a worshipper of the Idol of the Tribe. 

Now, if the Idol of the Tribe threw the baneful 
glamour of his superstition only over hats and 
gloves, skirts and blouses, nothing would have in- 
duced me to meddle with it. But, unfortunately, his 
spurious divinity aspires to preside over much more 
serious things. For, like mantles, morals are largely 
a matter of fashion. 'Succeeding generations,' says 
a great historian, 'change the fashion of their morals 
with the fashion of their hats and their coaches; 
take some other kind of wickedness under their 



The Four Idols 205 

patronage, and wonder at the depravity of their 
ancestors.' For centuries we tolerated slavery. 
The whole thing was fraught with anguish and 
shame. But then — everybody did it! And be- 
cause everybody did it, no one troubled much 
about it. Each worshipped secretly the Idol of 
the Tribe. 

I sometimes fancy that, even in our churches, the 
Idol of the Tribe is worshipped more often than we 
think. Here is a great evangelistic service! The 
hearts of men are strangely stirred. Each person 
feels that, if he were alone in the universe, he would 
become a Christian. But he is not alone. The place 
is crowded. The last hymn is sung. The people 
stream out into the street. There is chatter and 
laughter and noise. The sacred impressions are soon 
forgotten. Everybody does it. The Idol of the 
Tribe has secured his costliest oblation at the door of 
the sanctuary. 

II 






There is the Idol of the Cave. The cave is the 
home. There the man is monarch of all he surveys. 
An Englishman's home is his castle. In designing ^ 

it, in constructing it, in furnishing it, he thinks of ^^ q[ 
nothing but its comfort. He will make everything'K m^^^ 
as congenial, as agreeable, as snug as it can possibl^^ 
be made. And so far all is well; nobody can find 
fault with him. But our philosopher is afraid that 
he may carry his craze for comfort a little too far. 



2o6 The Uttermost Star 

For a man is more than a mere cave-dweller. He 
has a mind; he has a heart; he has a soul! He 
needs not only things, but thoughts; not only 
furniture, but faith. He is a thinking animal, an 
emotional animal, a believing animal. Whether he 
means to do so or not, he will find himself providing 
himself with a small stock of convictions. He may 
do it deliberately and systematically; or he may do 
it casually and absent-mindedly; but he will do it. 
It is a race-habit. And the danger is that, unless he 
is very careful, he may select the articles of his faith 
on the same principle on which he selects the articles 
of his furniture. He will gather together a few 
agreeable conclusions; he will provide himself with 
a comfortable creed; he will fit himself out with a 
neat Httle stock of congenial beliefs; and then he 
will rub his hands, lie back at his ease, and congratu- 
late himself on his shrewd discernment and excellent 
taste. 

This is the Idol of the Cave. Beware of it ! says 
Bacon. He would have me to know that I cannot 
select my conclusions as I select my chairs ; I cannot 
pick and choose a few beliefs as I would pick and 
choose a few bedsteads. Bacon says that I should 
cultivate the habit of distrusting my agreeable 
conclusions. Whenever I find myself believing w^hat 
it is pleasant to believe, I must carefully investigate 
the matter. It may be that I am worshipping the 
Idol of the Cave. It may be that I believe this thing 
just because it is nice to believe it. I am to suspect 



# 



t The Four Idols 207 

my agreeable conclusions. To suspect them; not 
necessarily to reject them. Bacon is too wise a guide 
to counsel me to reject a conclusion simply because 
it is so attractive. As a great Christian he knew as 
well as I do that some of the things that are most 
credible are the things that are most delightful. 
We believe them, and find it heaven to believe them. 
But v/e do not believe them because they are so 
captivating. Only a Stoic, an ascetic, a misanthrope, 
would ask me to reject a conclusion because it is 
so charming. To adopt such a course would be, not 
to worship the Idol of the Cave, but to fall prostrate 
before a still more hideous god. Bacon would never 
encourage such idolatry. Suspect your agreeable 
conclusions, he says. Do not reject them, but over- 
haul them. Analyse them; verify them; confirm p 
them. (V^ ciii ^^L^^ - *" 

in L<^ •KMr-wCeii'-L, ^ 

There is the Idol of the market-place. The 
Market-place was a great place in Bacon's day. A 
world that knew nothing of our modern ways of ad- 
vertisement and swift communication got over its 
difBculties by bringing everything to the Market- 
place. And the Market-place is a good place. God 
has built His world very largely on a commercial 
basis. Barter and sale are the essence of Hfe. The 
Market-place is for money-making; and there is 
nothing but good in the making of money as long as 
the money is made in the Market-place. The rival- 




2o8 The Uttermost Star 

ries of commerce have sharpened the wits of the 
race. The desire of each man to provide a better 
article than his neighbour has prompted a hurricane 
of invention and discovery. *There are,' says Dr. 
Alexander Mackennal, 'two services which wealth 
may render to society; the pursuit of it may make 
strenuous men; the employment of it may make 
generous men ; he who tries to gain what he may lib- 
erally use will become both strong and noble through 
the discipline.' Here, then, is the sanction and glory 
of the Market-place. 

But the making of money must be kept to the 
Market-place. That is the significance of the story 
of the Cleansing of the Temple. Jesus, we are told, 
*went into the temple of God, and cast out all them 
that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew 
the tables of the money-changers, and the seats of 
them that sold doves.' And why? Is it not good 
to buy and sell, to exchange coin, to offer doves for 
sale to those who need them ? It is — in the Market- 
place! But not in the Temple ! Jesus was protest- 
ing against the commercialization of that which 
never ought to be commercialized. He was hurling 
out of the Temple the Idol of the Market-place. 

This stone image of a god — is it a good thing or a 
bad thing? You say it is a bad thing. But was it 
a bad thing in the quarry? Is it bad, that is to say, 
in itself, or has it been made bad by the hands of 
bad men? These coins — are they good or bad? 
It depends on the use to which they are put. As 



The Four Idols 209 

soon as you introduce the commercial spirit into 
something outside the Market-place, you are in 
trouble. What about the commercialization of 
sport? Is not sport a good thing? But the 
introduction and rapid development of the pro- 
fessional spirit has largely been its undoing. Is it 
not a striking thing that the Puritans, who con- 
demned almost every form of recreation and enjoy- 
ment, kept racehorses ? Cromwell did. He thought 
that the matching of horse against horse was one 
of the most stimulating forms of enjoyment, and 
that the opportunity of meeting his friends on the 
turf was conducive alike to physical and intellectual 
recreation. What has reduced horse-racing from 
this high pinnacle to the plane on which it stands 
to-day? The answer is obvious. We have com- 
mercialized that which did not lend itself to com- 
mercialization. Or take politics. Are not politics 
a good thing? But when Sir Robert Walpole 
waves his hand towards the members of the House 
of Commons and exclaims, *A11 these men have 
their price !' we feel that the lowest depth of degrada- 
tion has been sounded. The thing has been com- 
mercialized. It is the worship of the Idol of the 
Market-place. As soon as you commercialize a 
good thing, whether it be a temple, a football-field, 
or a Parliament, you degrade it. As soon as you 
commercialize a bad thing, you perpetuate it. 
Could our fathers have borne so long with slavery, 
and could we have borne so long with the liquor evil, 



2IO The Uttermost Star 

but for the vested interests involved ? Beware, says 
Bacon, of the Idol of the Market-place. 

IV 

There is the Idol of the Theatre. Now to under- 
stand what Bacon means we must glance at tlie 
theatre as it existed in Bacon's day. The drama 
was then a very primitive affair; and among the 
most notable respects in which it differed from the 
drama of to-day stood the fact that there were no 
actresses. And why were there no actresses ? Why 
were women prohibited from appearing upon the 
stage? Why were the feminine parts all played by 
boys? If we can solve that problem, we shall catch 
just that subtle element in Bacon's thought that led 
him to speak of the Idol of the Theatre. The fact is 
that those Elizabethan pioneers of the modern 
drama thought that women are naturally so sym- 
pathetic, so intense, so fervidly emotional, that the 
very process of projecting themselves in imagination 
into the personalities which, in their stage parts, 
they represented, would leave some permanent 
impress upon the individuality and character of the 
actress. They felt that women would become 
affected, tainted with unreality, and spoiled. 

Beware, then, says our great English philosopher, 
beware of unreality! Does not the very word 
'hypocrisy' mean 'the playing of a part'? It is 
essentially a stage word. Beware of the Idol of the 
Theatre! Once more our philosopher would apply 



The Four Idols 211 

the warning particularly to thought. Beware of 
pretending to accept conclusions that are not really 
your own. Beware of pretending to reject conclu- 
sions that, in your secret soul, you acknowledge! 
There are two kinds of hypocrites. There are the 
people who pretend to be a great deal better than 
they are; they are the minority. And there are 
those who pretend to be a great deal worse than they 
are; they are the majority. There are those who 
pretend to be Christians, and are not; and there 
are those who pretend not to be Christians, and are. 
Both are playing a part; they are indulging in an 
affectation ; they are tainting their souls with unreal- 
ity ; they are guilty of hypocrisy. Bacon would urge 
both of them to give up their play-acting. Beware, 
he would say, of the Idol of the Theatre ! 

V 

Miss Kingsley tells of a certain medicine-man in 
West Africa who found himself at death's door. 
He applied all his herbs and spells, and conducted all 
his well-worn rites before his idols without any ef- 
fect. At last he wearied of his hocus-pocus, and 
took his idols and charms down to the sea-shore and 
flung them into the surf, and he said, 'Now I will be 
a man and meet my God alone !' The greatest hour 
in a man's life is the hour in which he spurns the Idol 
of the Tribe, the doing of what everybody does; the 
Idol of the Cave, the doing of what is agreeable to 
him; the Idol of the Market-place, the doing of what 



212 The Uttermost Star 

pays him best ; and the Idol of the Theatre, the doing 
of that which does not reflect his real and genuine 
self; and stands an honest, sincere, and penitent 
idolater in the august Presence of the Holiest of All. 



Ill 

HIS WORSHIP THE MAYOR 

For many a long year Tammas Dalgleish was Mayor 
of Mosgiel, and reigned without a rival. At election 
after election the little old gentleman was returned 
unopposed. Indeed, it came to be regarded as the 
natural thing. Nobody quite knew why. I have a 
notion that it was just because Tammas was old. 
The other members of the Borough Council were 
aggressive young townsmen, the warmth of whose 
ardour incubated all kinds of municipal policies, and 
the restlessness of whose brains littered the council 
table with an infinite variety of schemes. The 
result was inevitable. As soon as Councillor 
MacDonald stated his policy, the council fell into 
two parts as though it had been cleft by a sword. 
Half the councillors said 'Hear, hear,' and half 
shook their heads sagaciously, and muttered to 
each other that it would never do. And when, a 
few weeks later, Councillor Campbell outlined his 
scheme, the council was once mxore rent in twain. 
Half the councillors supported; half opposed. The 
same fate befell each of the other councillors in turn. 
There was only One member of the council who 

213 



214 The Uttermost Star 

never concocted a fresh policy or formulated a new 
scheme. That was Tammas Dalgleish. His absti- 
nence in that respect gave him an immense advantage 
when the mayoral election came round. Councillor 
MacDonald would have made an excellent Mayor, 
and his claims upon the honour were considerable; 
but then, he had a scheme! His elevation to the 
mayoral chair would place him in a position of 
commanding influence; it would invest him with a 
casting vote and other dangerous prerogatives; 
and it would probably lead to the adoption of his 
scheme. The hostile councillors said once more 
that this would never do. And so it came to pass 
that none of the councillors, save Tammas Dalgleish, 
could command a majority of votes when the elec- 
tions came round. Year by year, therefore, as 
regularly as the second Saturday in November 
returned, it was announced from the verandah of 
the council-chambers that only one nomination had 
been received, and that Councillor Dalgleish had 
been declared elected for a further term. The little 
old gentleman beamed, expressed his sense of the 
honour that had been done him, and promised that 
he would endeavour to prove himself worthy of the 
confidence of the citizens. Which meant, being in- 
terpreted, that he promised to sink peacefully into 
the chair for another year, never daring to think out 
a policy himself, or even to say Yea or Nay to any of 
the troublesome schemes that the younger and 
noisieir councillors might present. It all passed off 



His Worship the Mayor 215 

very pleasantly. There was speaking and cheering 
and drinking of healths. Everybody seemed per- 
fectly satisfied with the turn things had taken. And 
certainly Tammas Dalgleish was. 

He was an amiable little old man, not destitute of 
frailties. One of these was his excessive modesty. 
He was terribly afraid that we should forget either 
that he was a Scotsman, or that he was Mayor of 
Mosgiel. He had every reason to be proud of both 
these circumstances; and, as a matter of fact, there 
was not the slightest danger of our forgetting either; 
but he was obviously nervous about it. In the course 
of my twelve years at Mosgiel I came to know him 
pretty well, although only on two occasions did I 
have direct dealings with him. Of those two events 
I propose to tell the story now; and if into the first 
narrative there steals a suspicion of comedy, it will 
be seen that the second story is sufficiently dramatic 
to atone for that defect in its predecessor. But to 
my tale. 

It was in the days of the South African War. 
When it was announced that Lord Kitchener was 
conferring with the Boer leaders at Pretoria, every- 
body felt that peace was not far off. This conviction 
fastened upon the mind of old Tammas Dalgleish, 
and he decided to call a meeting of citizens to ar- 
range for a worthy celebration of the glad event — 
when it should come. He was good enough to call at 
the manse and ask me to be present. I very cheer- 
fully consented. At the meeting, over which he pre- 



2i6 The Uttermost Star 

sided, a programme was drawn up, a committee was 
appointed to carry it into effect, and, at His 
Worship's suggestion, I was appointed convener. 
We soon got things into shape and only awaited the 
declaration of peace to have everything moving. 
At last the welcome signal was given. The scream- 
ing of syrens, the ringing of bells, and the booming 
of guns apprised all and sundry that the war in 
South Africa had passed into history. I hurried 
down to the council-chambers, found His Worship 
there before me, and we soon got to work. The 
morning was occupied with the distribution of 
medals to all the children of the town. The main 
event of the day was timed for two o'clock. All the 
townspeople were asked to assemble at the junction 
of the main streets; led by the local band, they were 
to sing first the Doxology and then the National 
Anthem; and, after that, the procession was to start. 

At two o'clock, however, rain was threatening. 
The outlook for the procession and the subsequent 
events was very gloomy. When I entered the 
council-chamber a few minutes before the hour, I 
found His Worship in a state of extreme tension. 
He was tortured by visions of trees being planted 
and foundation-stones laid under torrential skies. 

*Come on,' he said impatiently, as I saluted him, 
'let us get the procession away at once! What's 
to be done ?' 

*Very little, your Worship,' I replied, handing 
him a fresh copy of the programme. *You have 



His Worship the Mayor 217 

simply to ask the people to join in singing, to the 
music of the band, first the Doxology and then the 
National Anthem/ 

I saw at once that he was displeased. He was for 
waving his hand and ordering the procession to start. 
I held out for the programme, the whole programme, 
and nothing but the programme. 

'Well,' he exclaimed at last, in a more conciliatory 
tone, 'let us split the difference. Let us drop the 
Doxology and sing the National Anthem T 

I pointed out that the Doxology was singularly 
appropriate to the occasion; that it was specially 
decreed at the meeting of citizens; that it was on the 
printed programme; and that its omission would 
seriously wound the sentiments of many of the 
citizens. 

His Worship lost all patience. I saw ten minutes 
later that he imagined the Doxology to be some 
ponderous kind of oratorio that might detain the 
procession for a good part of the afternoon. But I 
did not grasp his point of view until, looking daggers 
at me, he sprang up, rushed bareheaded on to the 
verandah, raised his hand to secure silence, called 
at the top of his voice, 'The band will lead the 
people in singing the Doxology,' and then added, 
with terrific emphasis, 'One verse only/ In the years 
that followed, it was quite a common occurrence, 
when things were getting lively in the council- 
chamber, for one of the councillors to suggest that 
they should sing together the second verse of the 



2i8 The Uttermost Star 

Doxology! And His Worship always smiled good- 
humouredly. 

It happened, a year or two later, that Dr. Harry 
Grattan Guinness came to Dunedin and conducted 
a series of special meetings in the largest theatre 
there. I was unable to go into town to any of the 
earlier meetings, but I saw that the series was to 
conclude with a couple of illustrated lectures, one 
on South America and the other on the Congo. I 
promised myself at least one of these; and, on the 
night of the South American lecture, I set off for 
the city. The lecture and the pictures far exceeded 
my anticipations. I was delighted, and resolved to 
return next evening. On my way to the station 
the following evening, whom should I meet but His 
Worship the Mayor? To this hour I cannot tell 
why I suggested such a thing; but before I knew 
what I was saying I was inviting him to accompany 
me ! He was the last man on earth whom you would 
think of inviting to a missionary lecture. 

*You ought to come, sir,' I was saying. *I went 
last night, and did not mean to go again; but the 
lecture was simply splendid, and the pictures were 
magnificent. I am sure you would enjoy it.' 

Before I realized what had happened, he had 
accepted my invitation, and we were walking side 
by side on our way to the station. I spent most of 
the time in the train wondering by what strange 
impulse I had asked His Worship to accompany me. 
That riddle was still unread when we reached the 



His Worship the Mayor 219 

theatre. It was filling fast. Surveying the crowd 
we noticed a couple of vacant seats about half-way 
up the area and slipped into them. 

As on the previous evening, the lecture was most 
interesting, and the pictures were among the best of 
the kind that I have ever seen. For all practical 
purposes we had left New Zealand miles behind, and 
were in the wilds of Central Africa. An occasional 
side-glance at my companion told me that he was as 
interested as I was. Then, suddenly, a change came 
over the spirit of our dream. 

*I propose now to show you,' said the lecturer, 'the 
photographs of some of the men who have laid down 
their lives upon the Congo.' 

I was afraid that this purely missionary aspect 
of African life would possess less interest for His 
Worship, and I was prepared for yawns and other 
indications of boredom. The coloured pictures of 
African scenery gave place to the portrait of a fine 
young fellow in the prime of early manhood. To 
my inexpressible astonishment His Worship almost 
sprang from his seat, grasped the back of the chair 
in front of him, and stared at the screen with 
strained and terrible intensity. 

Tt's my boy !' he cried, loudly enough to be heard 
some distance away. Tt's my boy ! It's my boy !' 

I naturally supposed that he had been affected by 
some curious similarity of appearance. Fortunately 
his agitation had not been noticed from the platform, 
and the lecturer went on. 



220 The Uttermost Star 

*This,' he said, 'is a young fellow named Dalgleish 
who came to us as an engineer to superintend the 
construction of our mission steamer. . . / 

*It's my boyJ' cried my companion, overcome 
now by uncontrollable emotion. *It's my boy, my 
poor boy !' 

Neither of us had eyes or ears for anything that 
followed. His Worship sat beside me, his face 
buried in his hands, swaying from side to side in 
silent agony. Every now and again he would start 
up, and I had the greatest difficulty in restraining 
him from rushing to the platform to ask more about 
his dead son. Sitting there beside him, it came back 
to me that he had once told me of a boy who ran 
away from home and went to London. *We were 
too angry at the time to answer his letters,' he had 
said, *and so, after awhile, he gave up writing, and 
we lost all trace of him.' When the great crowd 
melted away that night, I took His Worship to the 
lecturer's room, and introduced them to each other. 
The identity of the fallen missionary was established 
beyond all doubt, and Dr. Grattan Guinness ar- 
ranged to come out to Mosgiel and spend the next 
day with the Mayor and his wife. 

He did. I was not present, and I do not know 
what took place. But I often fancied, from little 
indications that I noticed afterwards, that the things 
that were said, and the tears that were shed, in the 
course of that visit were a means of grace to my 
friend, His Worship the Mayor. 



IV 

THE LANTERN IN THE LANE 

The soul of the artist shone through his wrinkled 
face. I really believe that, had his great gift been 
encouraged and trained, he would have taken his 
place among our most eminent Australian painters. 
I shall never forget the last time I saw him. After 
a long drive across the plains and round the foothills 
we reached Wattle Glen just as dusk was falling. 
He and his wife — a gentle old lady, with a soft, 
musical voice, and hair as white as his own — came 
out to the car and insisted that we must stay the 
night. During the evening she took me into the 
front room and showed me the pictures he had 
painted since my previous visit. 

'But he will never paint any more,' she said, 
with that subdued sadness with which very old 
people speak of increasing infirmities. *His sight 
is failing fast. He only recognized you by your 
voice when I led him out to the car.' 

As we rose, after an evening of pleasant remi- 
niscence, to take our candles, a sweet and tearful 
smile played over her face, and, stepping towards 
me, she said : 

T must tell you a little secret. It is our Diamond 

221 



222 The Uttermost Star 

Wedding-day. We were married just sixty years 
ago this morning. That is one reason why we were 
so delighted to see you, and so anxious for you to 
stay the night. We should like you to lead us in our 
thanksgiving.' 

I blew out the candle and returned it to the table, 
taking instead the Family Bible that she handed to 
me. She turned with a flush of pride to the entry 
that was just sixty years old. I was deeply touched 
by being permitted to lead them in their worship 
on that memorable night ; and when I rose, with the 
glow of the sacred exercise fresh upon my spirit, I 
had no desire to open fresh conversation. An 
immediate retirement seemed more in keeping with 
the eternal fitness of things. I turned to go. And 
then, to my surprise, the old gentleman broke the 
silence. 

'Those were beautiful words that you read,' he 
said, 'about the light shining in a dark place ; would 
you mind repeating them?' 

I took the Bible and read again: 'We have also 
a more sure word of prophecy; whereunto ye do well 
that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a 
dark place, until the day dawn and the day -star arise 
in your hearts/ He leaned forward, listening in- 
tently. 

'Beautiful pictures!' he murmured, lying back in 
his chair, as though totally unconscious of our pres- 
ence. 'Beautiful pictures! I have never painted 
anything like that !' 



The Lantern in the Lane 223 



I took my candle and retired, puzzling over his 
words. And yet, when I looked at them again, I 
was surprised that I had never noticed the vivid 
artistic touches in those graphic phrases. The 
pictures sailed before my fancy now like a series of 
dissolving views. 'A dark place!' 'A light that 
shineth in a dark place!' 'The dawn!' 'The day- 
star!' It is a perfect gallery of masterpieces! 

'A dark place!' There rushes instantly to mind 
some tortuous track. It is hedged about by dense 
forestry; it winds and twists and forks and 
branches ; the huge boughs overhead blot out the sky. 
The traveller who, with no light to shine upon his 
path, attempts to thrid this labyrinth, is in a pitiable 
plight indeed. He cannot see his hand before him! 
He stumbles over a gnarled root ; he kicks against a 
heavy stone ; he puts his foot into a hidden burrow ; 
his face is torn by a straggling wisp of thorn. Some- 
times the continuous crunching of the scrub beneath 
his feet tells him that he has left the track altogether. 
It is a dark place. It may be that Peter's picture 
suggested Dante's. Dante tells of the time when, 
at the age of thirty-five, he awoke to the fact that he 
was lost. 

In the midway of this our mortal life, 

I found me in a gloomy wood, astray, 

Gone from the path direct : and e'en to tell 

It were no easy task, how savage wild 

That forest, how robust and rough its growth. 



224 The Uttermost Star 

Which to remember only, my dismay 
Renews, in bitterness not far from death. 

But where is this dark place, so vividly described 
first by Peter and then by Dante? Do they mean 
to say that the world is a dark place? And, if so, 
is it true? Is the world a dark place? Is it not 
bathed in brightness? Is it not the best of all 
possible worlds — a world that makes you glad to be 
alive? Can any man look upon a field of corn all 
flashing with red poppies; or upon a range of snow- 
capped mountains piercing the blue canopy above; 
or upon the sun sinking to rest in a tropical sea; 
or upon the waves dashing themselves into spray on 
a rock-bound coast; and declare, in spite of all this, 
that he is living in a dark place? Can any man who 
has ever gathered wild flowers in the lane; or w^ho 
has made friends with the furry creatures of the 
woods; or who has marked the plumage of the birds 
out in the forest ; or who has seen a salmon glitter as 
it comes flashing from the stream ; can any such man 
say that the world is a dark place? Can a man 
watch the children romping on the village green; 
or listen to the song of the nightingale ; or drink in 
one long liquid peal of laughter ; or take part in the 
boisterous fun by the fireside, and say that the 
world is a dark place? When my old friend spoke 
admiringly of this picture, among others, on his 
Diamond Wedding-day, was he thinking that the 
world is a dark place? But let us jump to no hasty 
conclusions. Does Peter really say that the world 



The Lantern in the Lane 225 

is a dark place? Or does he merely affirm that the 
world would be a dark place if it were not for the 
Bible? This sure word of prophecy, he says, is 
like unto a lantern shining in an otherwise dark 
place, and, by its illumination, saving the place from 
its own darkness ! 

And perhaps that is a true description of the world 
after all. It must be true, or my old friend would 
not* have thought it so artistic. The world is not a 
dark place. At least, it is not a dark place for us. 
But it would be a very dark place for us if we had 
no Bible, no knowledge of God, no clear revelation 
of His love and care. And it is still a very dark 
place for those to whom these priceless blessings 
have not come. Take the savages, for example. 
Barbaric people live for the most part in climes 
where Nature is more prolific, more gorgeous, more 
luxurious, than in these temperate zones. And yet 
life under such conditions, so far from being a pic- 
nic, is a night-mare. The savage is surrounded by 
companions whom he cannot trust, and he feels him- 
self to be at the mercy of natural forces of which he 
is horribly afraid. Every puff of wind that blows 
upon him is the breath of a demon. The air is full 
of hateful and malignant spirits. He knows not at 
what moment they may take it into their heads to 
destroy him. He lives in Paradise, but his Paradise 
is Purgatory to him. We know no such terrors. 
We have been taught that all these forces are under 
control. We have come to feel that they are gov- 



226 The Uttermost Star 

erned by inscrutable wisdom, by unerring justice, by 
infinite love. We may or may not be decidedly 
Christian; but we have read our Bibles, or come 
under the influence of those who have. And the 
sacred revelation there made has banished all super- 
stitious horrors. We are calm, restful, unafraid. 
The world is not dark, but delightful. Yet it is only 
delightful because of the lantern in the lane. 

II 

'Beautiful pictures!' murmured my old friend 
on his Diamond Wedding-day, sitting back in his 
chair and conjuring up before his sightless eyes the 
fair dreams that my reading had suggested. 'Beau- 
tiful pictures! I have never painted anything like 
that!' 

The lane ! 

The lantern in the lane I 

But my old friend saw a third picture. The dawn 
is breaking! The day-star is in the sky! As yet, 
it is true, the light is dim, crepuscular, uncertain. 
You are glad that you have the lantern in your 
hand. But, still, the darkness has gone! The grey 
dawn is filtering through the branches overhead; 
And, high above you, is the Morning Star! What 
did Peter mean, I wonder, by this third picture? 
He leaves us in no uncertainty. For see ! * . . .a 
light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn 
and the day-star arise in your hearts!' It is the 
light breaking within! It is the dawn of Christian 



The Lantern in the Lane 227 

experience! In his Horae Subsecivae Dr. Brown 
comments on the picture of Luther in the Convent 
Library at Erfurt, and he lays stress on the fact 
that, as Luther pores over the sacred pages, the 
dawn comes stealing in through the windows. 
'The young monk,' he says, *is gazing into the open 
pages of a huge Latin Testament — we can see that 
he is reading the opening chapters of the Romans. 
A few dangling links indicate that the Bible was once 
chained — to be read but not possessed — it is now 
free and his own ! Next moment he will come upon 
— or it on him — the light from heaven, shining out 
from the words ''Therefore being justified by faith, 
we have peace with God," and, in intimation of this, 
His dawn, the sweet pearly light of morning, shining 
in at the now open lattice, is reflected from the page 
upon his keen, anxious face.' That is a touch of 
real spiritual genius. The imagery is unmistakable. 
The monk was reading the Bible in a dark place, 
when, suddenly, the day dawned, and the day-star 
arose in his heart ! 

The dawn! When the dawn comes stealing 
through the trees, the old lane becomes a new place. 
The branches are choral with song, and the air stirs 
with the hum of insect life. 'The day dawn from 
on high hath visited us!' sang the aged Zacharias 
when his lips were unsealed by the spirit of proph- 
ecy. He saw that the dawn had come, and that the 
old world was pulsing with a new and strange awak- 
ening. Yes, when the dawn comes stealing through 



228 The Uttermost Star 

the trees, the lane becomes a new place. In With 
Christ at Sea Frank Bullen has a great chapter 
entitled The Dawn.' It is the story of his con- 
version. And he tells how, having been led to faith 
in Christ by those majestic and inspired words that 
he had heard read to him by the seamen's mission- 
ary, the whole world seemed a new place to him. 
The leaves seemed greener, the sky bluer, the flowers 
sweeter. It was 'the dawn I To such a man the 
old lane is a dark place no longer ! It is heaven upon 
earth! The dawn has broken! The day-star has 
arisen in his heart ! His faith is fortified now by the 
strongest of all possible arguments — the argument 
of experience. The things that he has felt and 
known may not convince others; but they have lifted 
him beyond the reach of doubt. 

Ill 

And as I let my memory play about the look of 
triumph on my old friend's face that night, I am 
convinced that, among the pictures on which his 
blind eyes were so rapturously gazing, there was 
still another, and that other the brightest of them 
all. For is not the dawn the promise of the day? 
Is not the Morning Star the harbinger of the Sun 
himself! To be sure! If the exquisite symbolism 
of the apostle means anything, it means that those 
of us who have kept the track in the darkness by the 
help of the lantern — the light that shineth in a dark 
place — shall yet walk down the old lane amidst the 



The Lantern in the Lane 229 

splendours of noonday, our eyes enchanted by a riot 
of colour and our ears charmed by a festival of song. 
I never expect to visit Wattle Glen again in this 
life. And, even if I do, I shall find that its glory 
has departed. The old artist and his gentle com- 
panion no longer journey together there by lantern 
light. The vacant stare has passed for ever from 
his eyes. I may find their names engraved on a 
stone in the little God's-acre close to the church. 
But his artist soul feasts upon the beauty that is 
ineffable, and revels in the fadeless light of heaven's 
eternal noon. 



THE HOLLY-TREE 

I KNOW a holly-tree, a grand old holly-tree. It may 
be that there are other holly-trees with leaves as 
green and berries as bright; but, if so, they are 
unknown to me. The holly-tree whose praises I am 
singing stands beside the lovely lawn of a fine old 
up-country residence; its leaves always look as 
though they had just been cleaned and varnished; 
and the brilliant berries are a dazzling riot of red. 

I used to wonder why the birds are so fond of the 
holly-tree. They are no more comfortable among 
prickly leaves than I am; and everybody knows 
that the berries are not particularly palatable. 
But the other day Mr. J. W. Go f ton let me into the 
secret. The holly-tree is a sanctuary. *The tree,' 
says Mr. Go f ton, 'sheds a great many of its leaves 
after the summer has set in. These remain on the 
ground in thick profusion, and so formidable are 
their hard and pointed spines to the feet of such bird- 
hunters as the cat, the weasel, and the fox that these 
creatures dare not attempt to walk across them. 
Consequently the birds soon find out that they can 
secure immunity from danger in a holly-bush; and 

230 



The Holly-Tree 231 

throughout the autumn and winter a vast number 
of sparrows, Hnnets, buntings, blackbirds, and some 
starHngs spend their nights in peace and quiet 
among its branches.' It is pleasant enough to lounge 
on the lawn on a sunny autumn afternoon, and, 
amidst the trees that are strewing all the ground 
with russet and gold, to admire the old holly-tree in 
all its bravery of scarlet and green. But it is even 
more pleasant, when the darkness closes in, and we 
draw our chairs up to the fire, to reflect that, out 
there beside the lawn, a score or more of timid, 
shrinking, feathered things have found a peaceful 
sanctuary, secure from all their foes, under the 
kindly and powerful protection of the holly-tree. 

Now the holly-tree is not alone in this. The law 
of sanctuary is written e;very where. You chase the 
mouse until the frightened creature dives into its 
hole, and you know that your task is hopeless. 
The tiny thing has found sanctuary. You hunt a 
rabbit till at last it vanishes into its burrow under 
the long gorse hedge. You can follow it no farther. 
It has found sanctuary. In his Fields of France 
Mr. Macdougall tells how, in the merry month of 
May, the stag defies its keenest pursuers. Among 
the picturesque fields and forests of Fontainebleau 
the hounds and huntsmen meet. The scent is found. 
The chase opens gaily. But soon the flying stag 
takes to the valleys. And there *a beautiful fault 
frustrates the sport, for, thick as grass, the lily of 
the valley springs in all the brakes and shady places. 



232 The Uttermost Star 

The scent of the game will not lie across these miles 
of blossom. The huntsmen are in despair, and the 
deer, still deafened by the yelp of the hounds, be- 
holds himself befriended by an ally more invincible 
than water or forest oak, by the sweet and innumer- 
able white lilies that every May-time send the 
huntsmen home. Feeding among the fragrant 
flowers, the gazelle exults in delight and safety.' 
Far off up the valley the trembling creature hears 
the baying of the disappointed pack; but he has 
found a sanctuary amidst the perfume of the petals. 
Mr. Seton and Mr. Stewart White have both told of 
the way in which the hunted animals of the great 
African and American forests will fly for sanctuary 
to the camps of men. *Every night,' says Mr. White, 
'a fawn used to sleep outside my friend's tent, within 
a foot of his head. It was seeking protection from 
the wolves by which its mother had been killed.' 
This most attractive law pervades the whole of life. 
It is everywhere. I can find no stick or stone in the 
solar system upon which it is not engraved. 

But are these furry and feathered things the only 
creatures in the universe that need a sanctuary? 
Surely not! Peep into the nursery or the play- 
ground, and you will see that, from our earliest 
infancy, we ourselves seek its beneficent protection. 
In every game there is a home or a base or a 'fen' 
or a 'barley' or a touching of wood — a sanctuary 
of some kind whereby the tired player may find 
respite from pursuit. And, later on, why do we 



The Holly-Tree 



233 



love at times to creep away to some lonely wood or 
quiet field or solitary beach? Is it not that, after 
the din and the dust, we find in the very stillness a 
sanctuary ? As Mr. Herbert Tucker sings : 

A sanctuary within the woods I know — 

A sheltered glade by the glad blue o'erspread, 
Close-set and tall the pine-trees round it grow; 

By their shed needles it is carpeted. 
And to its gracious solitude I steal, 

When my vexed spirit feels the stress of things ; 
Like some hawk-harried bird that hides to heal 

Its bloodied plumes, and rest its weary wings. 

Even within the wondrous mystery of my own 
complex nature, I am continually coming upon 
unexpected operations of that lovely law that I 
discovered among the branches of the holly-tree. 
What happens, for example, when I go to sleep? 
A man spends his day in toil and worry and anxiety. 
Then at night he throws himself upon his couch, and 
the most wonderful thing happens. He closes his 
eyes, and where is he? He has left his worries 
worlds behind. He has found sanctuary. Or a man 
hurts a limb. The pain reaches a certain point. 
But beyond that limit his anguish cannot go. The 
limb becomes numb. He finds sanctuary. Or in 
sudden fear or mental agony one loses consciousness. 
We faint. It is a way we have of leaving the 
difficulty behind for a while. We plunge into obliv- 
ion, and find sanctuary. 

And then again, turning to the social side of Hfe, 



234 The Uttermost Star 

what a beautiful sanctuary is home! When a man 
is tired and feels that the world is hard, he turns 
away from his tasks at sunset, and goes home. 
And when he turns that handle, and sets that door 
between himself and his cares, and loses himself in 
the love of a wife who worships him, and of children 
who clamber to his knee, he feels that he has found a 
sanctuary indeed. And what shall I say of friends? 
God made a beautiful thing when He made friend- 
ship. All day long we are on our guard. We keep 
people at arm's length. We set a watch upon our 
lips. We speak with reserve. But at last we meet 
a friend, one to whom the soul is knit as the soul of 
David was knit to the soul of Jonathan. Reserve 
is thrown to the winds. We have secrets no longer. 
We unbosom ourselves with freedom. In the 
abandon of perfect friendship the heart finds its 
sanctuary. 

Or look in still another direction. Professor David 
Smith tells of a great lesson that he learned, as a 
young minister, from his old teacher and friend, the 
eminent Professor A. B. Bruce. 'He introduced 
me,' Professor Smith says, *to my first charge; and 
that Sunday night, as we sat in my study, he said to 
me, "You will get no inspiration from youi sur- 
roundings here; see that you seek it from your 
books." I remembered his counsel, and I found it 
good. The years which I spent in that quiet parish 
proved very profitable. Many an evening I would 
come home sick of petty jealousies, and fretted by 



The Holly-Tree 235 

trivial narrownesses, and would get into my study; 
and, behold, I was in a large and wealthy place and 
in the fellowship of the immortals. My study was 
the most sacred and wonderful place on earth to me. 
It was my refuge and my sanctuary.' My sanctuary, 
mark you ! And it was probably with this reminis- 
cence of his early ministerial days in mind that 
Professor Smith penned for us the following verses : 

I bless Thee, Lord, that when my life 

Is as a troubled sea, 
I have, remote from its rough strife, 

Harbours to shelter me. 

I bless Thee for my home, where love 

Her sweet song ever sings, 
And Peace spreads, like a nesting dove, 

Her gentle, brooding wings. 

And for this chamber of desire. 

Where my dear books abide, 
My constant friends that never tire. 

Teachers that never chide. 

In my London days I used to turn aside sometimes 
from the bustle and turmoil of the city, and stand for 
a moment in the spacious quiet of St. Paul's Cathe- 
dral. How delectable that stillness seemed as one 
crept in from the roar and tumult outside! And 
scattered about the great interior, one always saw, 
seated here and there, several with whom the world 
had gone very hardly. There was a haggard expres- 
sion in the face and a hunted look in the eye. They 
had turned into the sacred precincts for a moment's 



236 The Uttermost Star 

breathing-space. They had found sanctuary. It is 
but a picture and a parable of the Church universal. 
She offers shelter to the battered and the baffled and 
the brow-beaten throughout the wide, wide world. 

Indeed, it may be said that the Church is not only 
a sanctuary herself, but she literally dots the world 
with sanctuaries. They spring up automatically 
wherever she goes. They respond to her message 
as the flowers respond to the spring. What are your 
hospitals but sanctuaries for the diseased, the 
damaged, and the broken ? What are your asylums, 
your infirmaries, your orphanages, your almshouses, 
your whole network of benevolent and philanthropic 
enterprise, but so many sanctuaries to which the 
distracted, the aged, and the unfortunate may 
repair? Like the fairy who transformed all that 
she touched into silver, Christianity, by some subtle 
magic of spiritual alchemy, turns everything that 
it touches into sanctuary. See how it laid its hands 
upon the heart of our own great empire, and turned 
every inch of our soil, and every ship on our seas, 
into a sanctuary for the slave. 

Slaves cannot breathe in England: if their lungs 
Receive our air, that moment they are free; 
They touch our country, and their shackles fall. 

*No matter,' said the eloquent John Philpot 
Curran, 'no matter with what solemnities he may 
have been offered upon the altar of slavery, the 
moment he touches the sacred soil of Britain, the 



The Holly-Tree 237 

altar and the god sink together in the dust, and he 
stands redeemed, regenerated, disenthralled.' 

But, as is the case with so many subjects, the 
greatest word ever spoken about sanctuaries was 
uttered by one of those old Hebrew prophets who 
always seem to probe to the inmost heart of every- 
thing. 'A, glorious high throne/ he says, 'is the 
place of our sanctuary/ A throne, a sanctuary! 
It seems self -contradictory. And yet, when you 
come to think of it, the throne is ever the best 
sanctuary. Sir Walter Scott has outlined this great 
truth for us in the tender story of Jennie Deans. 
She was tempted to save her wayward sister by a lie. 
It was a very little lie, a mere glossing over of the 
actual truth. The slightest deviation from actual 
veracity, and her sister's life, which was dearer to 
her than her own, would be saved from the scaffold, 
and her family honour would be vindicated. But 
Jeanie could not, and would not, believe that a lie 
could afford a real refuge. And she told the truth, 
the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. And 
then she set out for London. Along the great white 
road she trudged, until her feet were bleeding and 
her exhausted form could scarcely drag itself along 
the dreadful miles. But on she pressed, until she saw 
the lights of London town ; and still on, overcoming 
every barrier, until she stood before the Queen. 
And then she pleaded, as no mere advocate could 
plead, for Effie. With what passion, what entreaties, 
what tears, did she besiege the throne! And, before 



238 The Uttermost Star 

the tempest of her grief and eloquence, the Queen 
yielded completely, and gave her her sister's life. 
That is the glory of the gospel. It is the introduc- 
tion of the shuddering soul to the Highest Tribunal. 
And there, at the Throne, in the august Presence of 
the Highest, the stricken heart finds its solace, its 
satisfaction, and its sanctuary. It is as when the 
linnets cluster together on the smooth bark of the 
great holly branches, knowing that a thousand leafy 
spear-points protect them from all prowling beasts 
of prey. It is as when the hunted, terrified, and 
breathless deer enters the leafy glade to which the 
hunters cannot come. The soul that seeks the 
Throne has found sanctuary, true sanctuary, at last. 



VI 

RIFTS OF BLUE 

We do not see the stars in the daytime. They are 
there at noon just as much as at night, but the 
dazzHng splendour of the sun shames them into 
invisibility. Something very similar occurs in the 
touching narrative of the sorrow at Bethany. It 
is the only story of a personal bereavement, told with 
vivid domestic detail, that the New Testament gives 
us. It closes sensationally with the raising of 
Lazarus. Sometimes I wish that it did not. That 
stupendous miracle has engrossed all our attention 
to the detriment of several exquisitely beautiful 
things that occur elsewhere in the story. The sun 
has blotted out the stars. I am going to forget for 
a few minutes the dramatic close of the story. I 
am going to read it again just as I would read any 
other record of domestic grief. And, reading it 
thus, I feel like one who, looking upward, gazes upon 
a sky overspread with grey and gloomy clouds, yet 
who sees here and there the most glorious rifts of 
blue. Those rifts of blue are openings into immens- 
ity, peeps into infinity, windows that open upon the 
everlasting. Let me point to one or two. 

239 



240 The Uttermost Star 



In the course of His journey to the stricken 
home Jesus said a very striking thing. 'Our 
friend Lazarus sleepeth.' Each word deserves 
to be examined under a microscope. To begin with, 
is it not intensely suggestive that, with Jesus, Laz- 
arus is still Lazarus? He speaks of him still by 
the fond, familiar name, and by that name, in the 
thrilling climax, again addresses him. 'Lazarus, 
come forth!' And to that name Lazarus responds. 

Where wert thou, brother, those four days ? 

There lives no record of reply, 

Which telling what it is to die 
Had surely added praise to praise. 

We do not know. But wherever he was, he was still 
Lazarus. Death had done nothing to impair his own 
identity. He was still Lazarus in the thought of 
Jesus. He was still Lazarus in his own conscious- 
ness. By the old name Jesus called him. To the 
old name he answered. The grave robbed him of 
nothing that was really worth preserving. 

II 

Lazarus is still Lazarus; the old identity is un- 
impaired. Lazarus is still our friend Lazarus; the 
sweet old relationships are undisturbed. And best 
of all, Lazarus is still ours. 'Our friend Lazarus.' 
If that means anything, it means that those whom 



Rifts of Blue 241 

we have loved long since and lost awhile are still 
our own. 'Our friend sleepeth.' God does not toy 
with our holiest affections, giving us one day those 
whom He would have us love, and the next day 
taking them from us. Our own are our own for 
ever. Lazarus, though dead, is still our Lazarus. 
The same idea occurs in the Old Testament. In the 
first chapter of the Book of Job, which Carlyle con- 
sidered the greatest drama ever written, we are told 
how Job, by one fell stroke of dire calamity, lost 
all that he had. And then, in the last chapter, we 
are told that 'the Lord gave Job twice as much as 
he had before.' And in each case there is an in- 
ventory. Job lost seven thousand sheep ; at the end 
he possesses fourteen thousand — twice as many. 
He lost three thousand camels; six thousand are at 
last given him — twice as many. He loses five hun- 
dred yoke of oxen; in the last chapter he owns a 
thousand — twice as many. He loses seven sons and 
three daughters; in the last chapter seven sons and 
three daughters are born to him. Why are the num- 
bers of sheep, camels, and oxen doubled, whilst the 
number of sons and of daughters remains the same? 
And since the number of sons and of daughters re- 
mains the same, how can it be said that he had twice 
as many as before? The reply is obvious. He had 
lost his sheep and camels and oxen for ever. His 
sons and daughters who had passed from his sight, 
together with the sons and daughters around his 
knees, gave him twice as many as he had before. It 



242 The Uttermost Star 

means that Lazarus is still our Lazarus. That is 
Wordsworth's idea in *We are Seven.' 

'Sisters and brothers, little maid, 

How many may you be?' 
'How many? Seven in all/ she said. 

And wondering looked at me. 

'And where are they? I pray you tell/ 

She answered, 'Seven are we; 
And two of us at Conway dwell. 

And two are gone to sea. 

'Two of us in the churchyard lie, 

My sister and my brother; 
And, in the churchyard cottage, I 

Dwell near them with my mother.' 

It appeared to her questioner that there was matter 
here for subtraction, but the curly-headed little 
maiden would not hear of it. 

'How many are you, then,' said I, 

'If they two are in heaven?' 
Quick was the little maid's reply, 

*0 master 1 we are seven.' 

'But they are dead; those two are dead! 
Their spirits are in heaven!' 

*Twas throwing words away; for still 
The little maid would have her will, 
And said, 'Nay, we are seven !' 

She clung to her conviction that Lazarus is still our 
Lazarus, and she had the divinest authority for her 
simple faith. 



Rifts of Blue 243 

III 

Or, turning our faces in a fresh direction, let us 
peer through another rift in this leaden sky into the 
clear heavens beyond. Is it not very singular that 
on His arrival at the home in Bethany — His home at 
Bethany — He wept? In our bereavements we at- 
tempt to stifle sorrow by the thought of their happi- 
ness whom we have lost. Jesus knew intimately 
the perfect felicity of Lazarus, and yet He wept! 
He knew, too, that, in an hour, the joy of Mary and 
of Martha would be complete, and yet He wept! 
Do these tears need explanation ? 

It is, at any rate, a comfort that He wept. By 
weeping He at least assured us that there is nothing 
faithless, nothing wicked, in our tears. And it would 
be like Him to sympathize with us in our sorrow, 
however needless that sorrow might be. Sorrow is 
sorrow, even though there be no sufficient cause for 
grief; and, just because the anguish was there, He 
shared its bitterness. There is a lovely letter 
written by Mrs. Carlyle to that rugged old husband 
of hers in the course of which she tells him how, 
during a recent illness, she was greatly comforted by 
her maid. The girl only came into the room, and 
rubbed her cheek against her mistress's; but it 
strangely soothed her. 'And sometimes,' adds Mrs. 
Carlyle, T could tell that her cheek was wet, and her 
tears meant much to me.' I like to think of poor 
Jane Carlyle's letter when I read the story of those 
tears at Bethany. 



244 The Uttermost Star 

And was there not an element of pity in them? 
Pity for the sisters, since they were unable to see all 
that He had seen — the glory upon which, with 
unveiled face, Lazarus was gazing; and pity for 
Lazarus too. He Himself knew what it was to 
leave that brighter world for this less radiant one, 
and He felt for Lazarus in having to make the same 
great sacrifice. Professor David Smith, in writing 
on the epistles of Isidore, "the Greek scholar and 
saint, quotes from a letter which Isidore wrote to 
Theodosius the Presbyter on this very matter. 
Isidore, says the Professor, was a gentle and gra- 
cious soul who had quitted the city of Alexandria 
and sought retirement that he might give himself to 
devotion and study. He had no aptitude for ecclesi- 
astical activities and contentions, and his name never 
appears in the bitter and futile controversies which 
mark the Church history of that period; yet he exer- 
cised in his seclusion a rare ministry of rich and 
far-reaching beneficence. He was a scholar, and he 
was gifted with an understanding heart and a sym- 
pathetic spirit. Troubled folk turned to him in their 
perplexities, and they found in him a wise coun- 
sellor. He wrote letters near and far, and over two 
thousand of these have survived. In one he deals 
with this question as to why our Lord wept by the 
grave of Lazarus. *Why,' he asks, *did Jesus weep 
for Lazarus, knowing that He would raise him from 
the dead?' Isidore answers his own question. *It 
was precisely on that account,' he says, 'that Jesus 



Rifts of Blue 245 

wept. Lazarus had entered into his felicity, and 
Jesus wept at having to recall him. The miracle 
was necessary in order to convince the unbelieving 
Jews of His divine title; but in His eyes, knowing 
as He did the eternal realities, it was a cruel neces- 
sity. The storm-tossed mariner had reached the 
haven, and He must call him back to the billows ; the 
warrior had won his crown, and He must call him 
back to the conflict. And therefore He wept — not 
because Lazarus had passed into the joy unspeak- 
able, but because he must return to this poor troubled 
life.' From any point of view, then, those silent 
tears are wondrously and divinely significant. 

IV 

Just one more rift in those grey skies. We have 
walked with Him along the Bethany road; we have 
sat with Him in the house of sorrow; let us, without 
waiting to witness the actual miracle, go with Him 
to the tomb. 'And He cried with a loud voice, 
Lazarus, come forth!' Why with a loud voice, 
since Lazarus lay at His feet ? Old Matthew Henry, 
with rare insight, declares that He cried with a 
loud voice to show that He was not addressing 
the dead body at all. Had he spoken softly it 
might have been supposed that the living soul and 
the dead body were inextricably intermingled. He 
looked away from the dead body, and cried with 
a loud voice that it might be seen that He was ad- 



246 The Uttermost Star 

dressing a living soul at a distance, and not a dead 
man close at hand. 

And why was it needful to call upon Lazarus by 
name? There were no others lying in that grave. 
Would it not have been sufficient had He simply 
cried, *Come forth!'? 'He singles out Lazarus 
by name,' says Augustine finely, *lest all the hosts 
of the dead should hear His voice and come forth 
together!' The time had not yet come for that. 
Some day He will say, 'Come forth !' and the dead 
will rise from land and sea at His sublime behest. 
But on that day at Bethany He only wanted one. 
He named His man, and, from out the world in- 
visible, Lazarus instantly came at His call. 

V 

Peering through these rifts of blue, I clearly see 
two things. I see that, wherever those old com- 
panions are whom I have loved long since and lost 
awhile, they are within His care and at His call. At 
any moment He has but to speak their names and 
they instantly rise to greet Him. And the other 
thing is this. He calls Lazarus, and Lazarus alone ! 
Why only Lazarus? H it is in His power to sum- 
mon our dear ones from their graves and restore 
them to their old familiar places, why does He not 
do it ? The fact that He calls Lazarus, and Lazarus 
alone, proves indisputably that the others are better 
where they are. Wherefore comfort one another 
with these words. 



VII 

A DIVIDED DIACONATE 

It is part of the poignant pathos of a minister's life 
that the good old men who, as his first officers, 
fathered him in his callow youth, fall into their 
honoured graves before he is well launched upon his 
long career. Like the pilot who steers the vessel 
through the narrow and treacherous channel to the 
harbour's mouth, and is dropped as soon as the ship 
is once tossing on the open sea, those revered fathers 
in Israel leave the young minister as soon as the 
initial difficulties have been safely surmounted. 
I confess that, as the years have multiplied behind 
me, I have felt an ever-increasing longing to go back, 
just for once, to the queer old vestry in which my 
first deacons were wont to assemble, and to find 
myself once more surrounded by those rugged old 
stalwarts, grizzled and grey, who welcomed me to 
Mosgiel nearly a quarter of a century ago. I looked 
into their faces for the first time as I stepped from 
the train at the end of my long, long journey from 
London to that little New Zealand township. They 
were standing, the centre of a large and excited 
multitude, on the railway platform in the moonHght; 

247 



248 The Uttermost Star 

and nobody thought of shaking hands with me until 
those solemn elders had approached and gravely 
welcomed me. How my heart quailed that night as 
I gazed into their venerable faces ! How ridiculously 
young and inexperienced I felt! But I soon dis- 
covered that behind countenances that were like 
granite cliffs there lay a great wealth of human 
tenderness. They pitied my loneliness, for had they 
not each of them crossed the same wide seas in the 
days of long ago? And, deep down in their hearts, 
I think that each man felt that I had come to bury 
him, and the thought brought a new softness into 
all their breasts. During the twelve years that I 
spent at Mosgiel they, one by one, slipped silently 
away. I was their first minister, and they were my 
first deacons. I dare say that the Mosgiel church 
has been excellently served by its officers since then ; 
but no group of faces assembled in that vestry could 
look to me like the apostolic successors of the old 
men of whom I am thinking to-day. 

Of the brave battles that were fought in that old 
vestry I could, if I would, tell a stirring tale. The 
congregation had no idea that such tremendous 
debates ever took place. 

'It's our practice,' Wullie explained to me at the 
first meeting I ever attended, 'it's our practice 
always to lay a matter unanimously before the kirk. 
The minority never says a word after we leave this 
room.' 

And so it came to pass that no echo of the great 



A Divided Diaconate 249 

debates held in that vestry ever reached the church 
meetings. At the larger assembly it was always 
my duty to announce that the deacons recommended 
that certain courses of action be pursued, and the 
matter passed without discussion. As a rule the 
faces of the men who had made up the minority 
at the earlier meetings were a study at such mo- 
ments ; but only the chairman had the oportunity of 
surveying those lightning-flashes and thunder- 
clouds. Only once did the argument in the vestry 
become so heated as to be worthy of classification 
as a quarrel; and, as it has proved my only expe- 
rience of the kind, I have promised myself the satis- 
faction of seeing it placed on permanent record. 

It was Gavin — surnames were regarded as a re- 
dundance among these men — who made the proposal 
that led to all the trouble. Gavin was severely prac- 
tical. He had a keen eye for the cutting of the 
hedges, the weeding of the paths, the painting of 
the buildings, and all that kind of thing. A most 
useful man was Gavin. He was absolutely inno- 
cent of any aestheticism ; his one criterion of church 
music was its volume; he fairly squirmed under a 
quotation from Dante or Browning. I always 
associate Gavin w^ith a certain annual church meet- 
ing. In order to lure the settlers and their wives 
from the distant farms and homesteads, it was our 
custom to supplement the annual business meeting 
with a coffee supper. On this particular occasion 
the strategy had been more than usually successful; 



250 The Uttermost Star 

the place was crowded, and the business had simply 
romped through. The evening was quite young 
when the end of the agenda was reached. 

'Before I ask the ladies to bring in the coffee,' 
I said, *is there any other matter with which we 
must deal?' 

*Yes/ cried Gavin, springing to his feet, 'there 
is ! We ought to have some rules drawn up concern- 
ing the lending of church property. Now there are 
those urns. They are lent to all the organizations 
connected with the church for their socials and 
soirees, and the members borrow them for weddings 
and house-warmings. And nobody cares how they 
are returned, or whether they are put back clean. 
Now, this very afternoon, when I came down to see 
that everything was in readiness for to-night's 
supper, I found half an inch of maggots in those 
urns !' 

It was a most incisive and telling speech from his 
own point of view, but a perceptible gloom fell upon 
the coffee supper. It was happy for Gavin that the 
election of officers was over. Had it followed that 
speech, the ladies who had been busy over the re- 
freshments all the afternoon would have voted 
against him to a man. 

But to come back to the quarrel. It was Tammas 
who led the opposition. Tammas was our treasurer, 
and the man who got church money out of Tammas 
was regarded in the light of a genius. I can see him 
now, a massive old man of flinty and wrinkled 



A Divided Diaconate 251 

countenance, with an odd way of looking searchingly 
at you over his spectacles. I should have been 
frightened of Tammas, but he tore all fear out of 
my heart on the night of my induction. I arrived 
in Mosgiel on a Thursday night ; the induction took 
place on Friday. When it was all over, and the 
visiting ministers had departed, Gavin, Tammas, and 
I found ourselves standing at the gate together. 

*And have ye no coat?' asked Tammas, in sur- 
prise. 

*0h, no,' I answered airily. 'I didn't think I 
should need it,' and I reached out my hand to say 
good-night. 

To my astonishment the old man took off his own 
and insisted on my wearing it. If anybody saw me 
on my way home, they must have wondered what 
horrible disease could have reduced me from the 
bulk that I boasted when that coat was made for me, 
to the modest dimensions that I possessed that night. 

A great theologian was Tammas. As soon as I 
announced my text, Tammas took a huge note-book 
from his breast-pocket and a stubby blue pencil 
from his waistcoat. On Monday morning Tammas 
would be at the manse door looking as though, in 
the night, the church had been burned down or the 
treasury pilfered. When the study door had shut 
us in, he would very deliberately unbutton the big 
breast-pocket and draw out the ponderous note-book 
with its terrible blue records. 

The unthinkable glory of God,' he would read, 



252 The Uttermost Star 

holding the book close to his face ; and then, looking 
severely at me, 'You spoke yesterday of the unthink- 
able glory of God.' 

'Did I, Tammas?' I replied timidly, fearful of 
prematurely committing myself. 

*You did,' he would say. 'Ye ken I took it doon 
at the time.' 

Then, out from another of his immense pockets, 
came a well-worn Bible. And, from a list already 
prepared and drawn up in the note-book, he read 
passage after passage to show that the word 'un- 
thinkable' was improper and misleading. 

After I had committed old Tammas to his grave, 
I felt a little ashamed of the manoeuvre by which I 
circumvented this habit of his. 

'I can see how it is, Tammas,' I said to him one 
Monday morning, when his criticisms had been a 
little more searching than usual. 'This all comes of 
trying to preach without a manuscript. I have not 
had sufficient experience to enable me always to use 
the precise theological term, and the consequence is 
I fall back on the second-best, or even an inaccurate 
one. I begin to see the wisdom of reading the 
sermon. Such blemishes as these would be less 
likely to occur.' 

I knew that a manuscript in the pulpit was poor 
Tammas's pet aversion; and, surely enough, the old 
man came on Monday morning no more. 

I shall never forget the meeting at which Gavin 
and Tammas came to high words. The scheme that 



A Divided Diaconate 253 

Gavin introduced that night was one that he had 
cogitated for months. He had worked it out to the 
last detail. He had plans and specifications and esti- 
mates, and, as he enlarged upon his proposals, a 
look of fond pride came into his eyes. He already 
saw in vision the realization of his dream, and his 
soul was fired with admiration and affection. He 
sat back at last, leaving the plans spread out on the 
table. 

Tammas slightly inclined his head and looked at 
Gavin over his spectacles — always an ominous sign. 
Then he slowly unbuttoned his coat and drew out the 
note-book that we all dreaded. He laid it on the 
table and very deliberately turned over the pages. 
Then he plied poor Gavin with a fusillade of ques- 
tions. To make a long story short, he resisted the 
proposal on two grounds, the one financial, the other 
theological. Gavin had given no indication as to the 
sources of revenue from w'hich he expected to meet 
the proposed expenditure, and he, as treasurer, 
would never consent to apply the offerings of the 
congregation to such a purpose. And then, taking 
out his Bible and consulting his blue notes, he 
proved from a text in the Prophet Amos and another 
in the Epistle of James that the suggestion was an 
outrage on revealed religion. I never saw Gavin 
more ardent nor Tammas more determined. The 
position looked to me particularly ugly. In the 
course of the discussion that followed, some sharp 
exchanges took place. Gavin gave it as his deliber- 



254 The Uttermost Star 

ate opinion that the church finances had drifted into 
the hands of a niggardly old skinflint, who could 
find a text or two to prove anything that suited him ; 
and Tammas painted in lurid colours the doom of 
those stewards who squandered their Lord's money 
and brought wild-cat schemes into the house of the 
Lord. At last the proposal was defeated by a single 
vote. Gavin rose in anger, stuffed the plans hastily 
into his pocket, and strode out of the vestry. I 
noticed, however, that, in his wrath, he had for- 
gotten his hat, which still reposed under the seat that 
its owner had just forsaken. I knew Gavin well 
enough to feel sure that he would not march home 
bareheaded. 

We concluded the business of the evening about 
twenty minutes later, and followed Gavin out into 
the dark. The church lay a good distance back 
from the road, and a number of ornamental trees 
adorned the open space in front. As we walked 
up the path through this shrubbery, Davie, the 
youngest of them all, walked beside me and com- 
mented on Gavin's unseemly exit. I was on my 
guard, remembering the hat that, from my coign of 
vantage in front of them, I had seen under the 
vacated seat. I resolved to sound a note of warning. 

*0h, yes,' I said to Davie, but in a voice loud 
enough for them all to hear, *but we needn't worry 
about Gavin; he's all right! He thinks about this 
church all day and dreams about it all night. He 
was here before you and I ever heard of the church, 



A Divided Diaconate 255 

and I expect he'll still be here after you ard I have 
left it!' 

'I'm hearing all that ye say!' exclaimed Gavin, 
emerging somewhat shamefacedly from among the 
shrubs, and walking off towards the church for his 
hat. 

It was a trifling circumstance, but I could tell from 
the tone of Gavin's voice that a work of grace was 
proceeding in his soul, and perhaps the incident 
paved the way for w^hat followed. 

I went to bed that night like a man whose bubbles 
had all burst, whose dreams had all been shattered. 
I was excited and dejected and miserable. It was a" 
long time before I could get to sleep; but when I 
did I must have slept very soundly. I awoke with 
a start, conscious of a light in the room, of voices in 
the hall, and of my wife — a bride of but -three 
months — in slippers and dressing-gown bending 
over me. 

'It's Gavin and Tammas,' she explained, *and 
they say they want to see you.' 

'Why, what time is it ?' I asked, rubbing my eyes 
in astonishment. 

'It's twenty to one !' replied she. 

'We want to see ye terrible particular!' cried a 
voice from the hall. 

I nodded consent to their admission, and in they 
came, looking, I thought, extremely penitent. Gavin 
held out his hand, and, as he came nearer to the 
light, I saw something glisten in his eyes. 



256 The Uttermost Star 

This is no the way we meant to treat ye the 
necht ye arrived,' he said, and he pressed my hand 
again. Tammas also approached. 

*Ye must think as weel as ye can of us,' he said, 
as he too took my hand. *We shall need all yer 
patience and all yer luv, and ye must aye teach us 
better ways. Gavin and I have arranged all about 
yon plans, and we shall easily fix all that up at the 
next meeting. Now ye must put up a wee bit prayer 
for us !' 

I crept out of bed and knelt down beside Gavin. 
Tammas and the mistress of the manse were kneel- 
ing on the opposite side of the bed. If the utterance 
of lowly and contrite hearts is specially pleasing at 
the Throne of Grace, that must have been a prayer- 
meeting of singular efficacy and acceptance. Even 
Tammas wiped his spectacles when he rose. Gavin 
took his arm to help him along the dark path to the 
gate, and so ended my first and last experience of 
diaconal strife. 



VIII 

WHEN THE TIDE TURNS 

There is always a vague sensation of sadness in 
watching the sunset; but the particular sunset of 
which I am now thinking was the last sunset of the 
year. And it had, therefore, a pathos of its own. 
It was a typical Australian midsummer evening. 
After tea I had left the house for a quiet stroll, and, 
lured on and on by the tempting twists of the tor- 
tuous track, I had wandered farther than I had 
intended. I came suddenly to the riverside, and 
noticed that the tide was right out. Before com- 
mencing the return I sat down on some heavy drift- 
wood that the winter floods had flung into the 
shingly cove, and watched the violet and gold die out 
of the clouds over the mountain. When the last 
flicker of light had vanished I rose to go. How 
silent it all was ! The very river seemed asleep ! 
Everything seemed wrapped in the stillness of death 
— for was not the old year dying? A water-rat leapt 
from the bank into the stream, and swam round and 
round for a moment, describing graceful little circles 
on the smooth surface of the water. At other times 
I had been impressed by the silence of its move- 

257 



258 The Uttermost Star 

ments ; but, breaking up that uncanny hush, the tiny- 
creature seemed strangely turbulent and noisy. 
The swimmer crept back to his home in the bank, 
and everything was quiet again. 

But I had not gone more than a hundred yards 
before I was again startled. Not far away, out on 
the murky waters, lay a cluster of old hulks and 
barges moored in the sluggish stream. A strange 
flutter and commotion suddenly disturbed these 
slumbering craft. Such a tossing and jostling and 
swinging and bumping! Such a rattling of chains 
and creaking of timbers and straining of cables! 
What could it mean? I soon saw. It was the new 
tide surging up the river, agitating the old barges 
and breaking their repose. It was both a parable 
and a rebuke. The old is always stirred to fresh life 
and activity at the advent of the new. Who is more 
excited than the grandparents when a new baby is 
born? I stood corrected. I had been lamenting 
the passing of the old year. I had forgotten that 
the house is hushed for a birth as well as for a death. 
The silence was the silence of eternity, the silence 
out of which new worlds rush into being. What 
cause had I for gloom? I was losing nothing; I 
was gaining everything ! The heaving of the waters 
had opened my eyes; I was disillusioned! I felt 
that I must greet the unseen with a cheer, and went 
home with a smile of welcome for the New Year. 

For the hubbub and commotion out in the stream 
when the tide came surging in seemed symbolic of 



When the Tide Turns 259 

the eternal and pitiful feud between novelty and 
antiquity. I wonder if I can recall and record what 
it was that the surging waters and the drowsy craft 
said to each other as their quarrel broke the silence 
of that lovely summer's night? 

'Get out of the way!' cried the tide, as it pushed 
the old barges this way and that way, and seemed 
to be laughing at their slow movements and obvious 
infirmity. *Get out of the way ! We can't have the 
whole place littered up by the things of a past gen- 
eration!' And it jostled them rudely and irrever- 
ently against each other. 

Silly young tide ! What good can it hope to do in 
the world except by means of these old barges? Let 
it lift them gently, bear them patiently, and make it 
possible for them to visit creeks and inlets which 
they could never enter at low water ! These weather- 
beaten hulks that the tide treats with such disdain 
represent the one means placed at its disposal by 
which it may render the world some real service 
before it ebbs and goes again ! 

*Oh dear! oh dear!' cry the sleepy old craft. 
'What a nuisance it is ! We were sleeping so peace- 
fully; and everything was so still that even the 
splash of the water-rat startled us ! And then there 
comes all this flutter and commotion!' And 
anybody who caught the testy tones in which the 
old barges muttered this remonstrance could feel 
how deeply they resented the coming of the new tide. 

Silly old barges ! For deep down in their dark and 



26o The Uttermost Star 

cavernous holds there were lying bags and bales and 
casks and crates that could never reach their destina- 
tion at low water; and the new tide, as it came 
rushing, swelling, surging in, represented the one 
chance they had of getting their cargoes into port. 

It is very sad and pitiful, this wrangle between the 
old barges and the new tide. It is always sad and 
pitiful and humiliating when we fail to recognize 
that the old and the new belong to each other, and 
that neither is complete without the other. It is 
the peculiar temptation of youth to treat the tradi- 
tions of the past with impatience. And it is the 
special frailty of old people that they look with sus- 
picion upon everything new. Youth always has its 
face to the future and worships the new. Age al- 
ways has its face to the past and treasures the old. 

Now about all this Jesus once said a very striking 
thing, which I blush to confess that I never under- 
stood until yesterday. 'Every scribe,' He said, 
'who is instructed unto the kingdom of heaven is 
like unto a man that is an householder, which bring- 
eth forth out of his treasure things new and old/ 
Things new and old, mark you! Not a jumble of 
new things and old things all mixed up together, 
like new wine in old bottles. But things that are, 
at one and the same time, both old and new. For no 
really good thing is either old or new. It is both. 
Bring me the most antique object you can find, and 
I will show you how startlingly new it is ! Bring me 
the most newfangled idea that has come to light, 



When the Tide Turns 261 

and I will astonish you by revealing its hoary 
antiquity. 

The wise householder to whom our Lord referred 
was, it always seems to me, Mrs. Wildman, of 
Mablethorpe. We all remember the passage in 
Lord Tennyson's Life of his father — the laureate. 
That lovely entry always fascinates me. It occurs 
in one of the poet's letters to his sweetheart, Emily 
Selwood. T am housed,' he says, *with an old 
friend of mine, who, with his wife, is a perfectly 
honest Methodist. When I came I asked her after 
the news, and she replied, "Why, Mr. Tennyson, 
there is only one piece of news that I know, that 
Christ died for all men." And I said to her, "That 
is old news, and good news, and new news !" ' New 
and old! The good woman was so instructed unto 
the kingdom of God that she brought forth out of 
her treasures things that were both new and old! 

The old is so new! What is the oldest thing of 
which you can think? 'Old as the hills!' you say. 
Very well ; and as the phrase falls from your lips my 
thoughts fly back to the grand old mountain over 
whose towering head and massive shoulders I 
watched the sun set only yesterday — the mountain 
'with its head in the clouds and its feet in the sea.' 
How often have I wandered about its leafy tracks 
and wooded slopes! I can see it from my window 
as I write. Look at the scars up there on the summit 
— eloquent witnesses to wounds inflicted before our 
little race began. What cataclysmic changes the old 



262 The Uttermost Star 

mountain-peak has seen! What titanic forces tore 
those slopes in ages long gone by ! What storms and 
earthquakes and glaciers! See these huge gashes, 
these precipitous cliffs, these beetling crags, these 
jagged ridges, these scarped pinnacles, these piled 
and broken boulders! Bring a geologist, and he 
will tell you wondrous tales of Ice Ages and Stone 
Ages, of Tertiary periods and post-Tertiary periods, 
as he reads for you these stony records. 

Yes; here is antiquity with a vengeance. And 
yet, as I look out of my window morning by morn- 
ing, it is not the antiquity, but the novelty, of the 
mountain that startles me. We look out upon its 
pointed peak when we rise, and flatter ourselves that, 
from its appearance, we can forecast the weather 
of the coming day. However that may be, one 
thing is certain. The mountain, like the divine 
mercy, is 'new every morning.' It is as fresh as the 
dew on the grass. It is never twice the same. One 
day it is wrapped in angry storm-clouds, majestic 
and terrible. The next it is sullen and dismal, 
gloomy and grey. Sometimes it appears blue and 
close at hand. Sometimes it looks brown and far 
away. Now it is gay and sunlit. Soon it will be 
snow-capped and glittering. And in winter it will 
wear a robe of radiant whiteness. But in any case 
it is always fresh. Each time we say, 'Well, we 
never saw it quite Hke that before!' And if we 
ascend its bushy slopes, and cultivate its more inti- 
mate acquaintance, it is still the novelty of this an- 



When the Tide Turns 263 

tique mass that astonishes us. Like some incor- 
rigible coquette, the old mountain seems to take end- 
less pains to renew its youth. It is true that here and 
there, in falling trees and fading grasses, there are 
signs of decay. But beside the prostrate blue-gum 
are a hundred supple young saplings, and the faded 
fern is already almost hidden by a dozen fresh young 
fronds. And so the mountain-side seems always to 
be wearing a fresh garb. 'Just look here !' cries one 
child, as she rushes back excitedly from her rambles ; 
and 'See what I've found!' exclaims another. The 
mountain bewilders and embarrasses us by its very 
wealth of novelties. So new is the old. 

And how ancient is the new ! What is the newest 
thing of which you can think? A baby just born? 
When does a baby begin to be born? A baby is a 
very antique affair. All generations, right away 
back to Adam, slumber in this little child of yours. 
This newborn babe is about the oldest thing living. 
It is the natural emblem of antiquity. Sir Oliver 
Lodge, in a recent article, has shown how old our 
startling modern inventions really are. It is a simple 
matter of movement, he says. A man takes six old 
things and puts them in a fresh relationship to each 
other, and then calls the result a new invention. 
Volta, for example, took zinc, which is as old as the 
hills, and copper, which is as old as the hills, and 
acid, which is as old as the hills, and the three put 
together proved a sensational and epoch-making 
invention. What was there new about it? It was 



264 The Uttermost Star 

literally as old as the planet. And yet it was so new 
that it changed the face of the modern world, revo- 
lutionizing all our commerce, and turning our indus- 
tries into new channels. Yes, all these old things are 
wonderfully new, and all these new things are 
wonderfully old! Antiquity and novelty are twin- 
sisters. 

Yes, they are twin-sisters, and, as is so often the 
case with twin-sisters, they grow into each other's 
ways and become interdependent. They need each 
other, and we need them both. If we had the new 
without the old we should be instantly reduced to 
imbecility. I can tell the difference between chalk 
and cheese because old experiences of chalk and 
cheese come to my aid. I recognize a tree as a 
tree, and a man as a man, because all the trees and 
all the men from out of my past rise up to help me. 
A newborn baby is in such a helpless condition of 
mental vacuity simply because he is so pitiably 
pastless. He has no chalk and cheese, no men and 
no trees, by which he can test and compare the 
bewildering objects that swim into his vision. 

Similarly, if we had the old without the new we 
should be reduced to mental stagnation and spiritual 
paralysis. No man can live on old experiences. I 
need new mercies every morning, just as much as I 
need new meals. I need new visions, new ideals, 
new un foldings of the Father's face, new applica- 
tions of the Saviour's blood, new illuminations of 
the heavenly Spirit. Even though I move along the 



When the Tide Turns 265 

old routine, teaching the same old class, or preach- 
ing from the same old pulpit, I need new throbbings 
and pulsations of spiritual power. 

Listen to the water-mill, all the livelong day! 
How the clicking of the wheels wears the hours awayl 
Languidly the autumn winds stir the greenwood leaves; 
From the hills the reapers sing, binding up their sheaves; 
And a proverb o'er my mind like a spell is cast; 
'The mill will never grind with the water that is past* 

However old the mill may be, the stream that turns 
it must be newer than the newest sensation ! 



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